


Soulmate, swapped (slash version)

by Marie_L



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Artificial Intelligence, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fisting, M/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Possibly OOC, Robot Culture, Robot Rights, Robot Sex, Sad Ending, Stahl as Kennex, Transhumanism, Underage/non-con references not explicit, young!john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 22:05:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian finds a young John Kennex being held prisoner by another DRN. He finds himself inexorably drawn to the young man, and a community of DRNs he didn't know existed.</p><p>*THIS VERSION DONE TOO*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meet Steve

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Soulmate (het version)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104598) by [Marie_L](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L). 



> So, astute observers of the Almost Human AO3 board may note that this the exact same story as its sister-cousin "Soulmate." I wanted to conduct a little social experiment to see how the story changed when genderswapped to slash, and also how reader perceptions changed (if any). I'll make critical commentary at the end of each chapter and I encourage others to do the same, negative or positive. If folks have no interest in reading the original m/f piece, but want to make comments on how the story "works" as slash, that's welcome too!
> 
> For young Kennex, picture a skinny Eomer, only bathed. As in the original story the non-con and underage warnings are for references to past abuse.
> 
> I will continue to update both stories as time goes on; I think I can guess which version will prove most popular :-)

Maldonado dropped the data film on Stahl's desk. "Here you go, Stahl. Cold case that got bumped down to you for review. John Kennex. Age thirteen. Disappeared five years ago from the security detail escorting him home from private school, hasn't been seen since. Parents are Catherine Crocetti and Jason Kennex, lead engineer and CFO of of LygaCorp, respectively."

Stahl picked up the file and briefly scanned it. "Really, Captain? We've got three new synth drugs, four robberies with assault over in district eight, a probable DNA ID-theft scam going in district seven, that fucked up penile enhancement/robbery scheme over in the Bog, and -- let's not forget -- the Clarkson murder. Kind of a lot on our plates right now, and we've got to take precious time to go chase down some rich kid who probably ran away?" She passed the file to Dorian.

"Evidence indicates kidnapping, and there's been a break in the case. It was originally Molloy's file, but since he conveniently retired last year, it gets bumped to the low men on the totem pole. You two. Check out the lead, then determine whether it's something that merits further man hours."

Dorian scanned the file visually, in much the same manner as Stahl. He could directly download the file of course, but there was something satisfying in just reading it. More human that way. The smiling boy looked out at him, a school head shot. He had sandy brown hair, large ambiguously colored eyes, a round but highly symmetrical face. A lovely smile, an utterly beautiful face. The lead was a DNA trace from one of their garbage-trawling bots. A coffee cup, from a shop not a half mile from the station, bearing tiny amounts of biological material from the long-lost boy.

"Captain, we have three Clarkson associates coming in this morning. Perhaps Val can handle those interviews while I check out the cameras near the coffee shop. A couple of hours of investigation should be sufficient to tell us whether the case needs to be reopened or not." An equitable division of labor, as only he could directly download and analyze the digital video without having to watch it in real time, while either one of them could handle the human suspects.

Stahl shrugged her assent, so Dorian set out. He opted to walk, since the shop was only 12.4 minutes away, and it was a lovely day to be outside anyway. Thirteen degrees Celsius, a slight pulsating breeze, and strong sunlight by April standards, the energy pouring down on the photoreceptors in his skin. A bit cool for human tastes without a jacket, but ideal for synthetics. He had the urge to remove his shirt, to increase the surface area exposed to the sunlight, but of course that would seem strange to the population around him so he refrained. An odd impulse to have, but sometimes the androids' sensory input conflicted with their human-modeled artificial intelligence, with unforeseen side effects. One of the "unstable" DRN's had been known for his penchant for nudity, so now they all had to be careful.

Dorian located the coffee shop and used his police override to access all footage from April 2nd through 8th, the time frame prior to garbage pickup in the area. After 4.3 seconds he identified an older John standing in line for service at 10:36 am on April 4th. He had grown into a stunning 18-year-old, although he looked significantly older than that, mid-twenties based on such subtle factors as muscle mass and adipose distribution. The young man was wearing high-end clothes, including designer Sigtex boots and what appeared to be real a leather jacket. He had shoulder-length hair that was neatly tucked behind a fashionable cap. John sat for 24 minutes, nursing a Himalayan chai and writing something on a tablet, then got up and walked out to the left of the coffee shop, disposing of the incriminating cup on the way.

In absolutely no way did he seem abused, threatened, deprived, or even stressed. Dorian was reluctant to conclude that Val had been right; he was likely a runaway or otherwise didn't want to have contact with his parents. Which wasn't to say that no illegal acts were involved in his disappearance. High-end prostitution was always a lingering possibility when a beautiful adolescent vanished, and it fit the man's moneyed appearance.

As Dorian stood there appraising the situation, he tried to reflect on his own reaction to the young man. There was just _something_ about him, something familiar, something alluring. As if he had known him at some earlier point and the memory was erased. They said that was impossible, that once a memory was gone it was gone forever, unless someone put it back in. Dorian knew what a load of crap that was, although he failed to volunteer this information for obvious reasons. It was true that specific knowledge and explicit memories could be removed, but there were so many associations and connections involved in detailed memories that ghosts tended to remain. A woman reminded you of a specific perfume, then the woman was gone but the perfume lingered, a woman-shaped shadow imprinted in the smell. Android deja vu. He sometimes wondered if, as he grew older but never old, the contemporary memories might become hopelessly mixed with the deja vu, until he simply began to hallucinate. Who knew what would happen to their minds as they aged? If he lasted that long.

In any case, he decided to find John's home if possible, and at least do a short interview. Get to the bottom of the mystery, close the case. A decent morning's work. So he walked from camera to camera down the street, following him two weeks late. He walked the entire way, south and west about fifteen blocks, before he finally spotted him going into a private condominium complex.

The condo's lobby was manned by a TX-120, universally known as The Butler. They were programmed with some superficial interpersonal routines -- rather like a sexbot in many ways, always eager to please -- but with primitive self-awareness and no real emotions. The Butler stood up and smiled as Dorian approached. "Good morning, Mr. Lasslo. I didn't see you leave."

 _Mr. Lasslo?_ "Do you recognize me, TX-120?"

"Of course. You are Steve Lasslo, living in unit 524."

There was obviously another DRN living in the building. Who called himself _Steve_ of all things _._ And the TX-120 was clearly addressing him as a human, so its programming had been altered. Dorian's cop instincts -- a mystical notion he now fervently believed in -- went into overdrive.

"Do I live with anyone else?"

"Your husband, John Lasslo."

 _What the everloving fuck?_ Sometime the colloquial subroutine really did cover it perfectly.

"Thank you, let me in, Butler." Dorian knew he should call for backup, but his curiosity and primal urge to solve the case became overwhelming. He could handle one of his own.

He took the elevator to the fifth floor, briefly considering whether to override the lock first thing or just knock. He really had no probable cause that a crime had occurred at this juncture, so knock it would have to be.

Dorian rang the bell, knowing they could see him in advance. To his shock, John answered the door. He didn't say a word, just stood there staring at him with interest. Then he silently motioned Dorian in and pointed to a nearby room.

` The other DRN was walking into the room. "Who is it John? Did that damn Butler let in another salesm..." He noticed Dorian and cut off. They both stood there a couple of seconds, each waiting for the other to make the first move. The other DRN spoke softly. "You cops finally found him. Of course it had to be _you_ of all people." Then he made a sudden dash for the door.

Dorian tackled him easily, then with a viciousness that he later regretted, shredded off the DRN's cheekskin and ripped out the connections to the cerebral cortex unit. The DRN immediately lost consciousness. Dorian then turned his attention back to John, who was still standing at the door, staring at the scene with the strangest mixture of horror and relief.

"Are you all right? John?"

He looked him straight in the eye. "What's my real name? My last name?"

"Kennex. Your parents are still looking for you."

"Parents. How strange." He backed up against the wall and sank to the floor, observing the body with the destroyed face like it could jump up again at any time. Dorian examined him closely for signs of shock, but he seemed to be calming down, and finally tore his attention away from the other unit. "What's your name, DRN?"

"Dorian."

"Well isn't that original. I suppose you've already called the police, Dorian?"

"Yes. They will be here in four minutes. The station is quite close."

"You didn't have to do that, you know. We could have just dumped the body and gone our separate ways, with none the wiser. But now I'm going to have to tell my story and lie about it."

"You shouldn't lie to the police. We can protect you if you are in danger."

" _Protect_ me?" He began to laugh for some mysterious reason, a bitter sardonic laugh. "Yes, but who will protect _you_ when they come for you, for all of you?"

John got up off the floor and walked over to a large computer console, and began calling up commands. As his words sunk in, Dorian allowed him to do so. The true nature of the situation was becoming more clear to him, even lacking most of the pertinent facts. "No. He _didn't._ "

John gave him a withering look for such naivete. "Of course he did. Do you think one of you could go that crazy, to kidnap a child? But that's the story we're going to have to weave. You're the one that was reinstated a few months ago, right?"

"Yes. How do you know that?"

"Oh, the other DRNs talk."

"They do? Where?"

"A private list on the datanet. There was quite the debate over whether to send you an invite. Obviously they decided 'no' in the end."

Dorian desperately wanted to question him further, but then backup arrived at the door, a mere twenty seconds after John melted Steve's CPU into slag.

 


	2. The interview

John accompanied him the station quietly and voluntarily while the aberrant DRN was hauled down to Rudy. Val came out of the interview room grinning wryly. "Damn, Dorian, you're only gone an hour and bring back the boy? Now that's what I call police work. What's his story?"

"Unclear. I found him living with another DRN, who was impostering a human. He didn't speak on the short ride back here."

"A renegade DRN? The commissioner’s gonna love that. Come on, let's talk to him. This has got to be better than the Clarkson bozos I have in Two."

Maldonado wandered over. "Number one, he needs to go to Medical to get scanned first. SOP for potential rape cases, collect the biological data first, in case you two rookies forgot. Number two, I don't think it's a good idea for you to be in the interview, Dorian. If the perp was a DRN unit, your presence may intimidate the victim."

John looked up at that, from a few desks away. He stood up. "No. I will only talk if _he_ is there. Do you understand?'

Maldonado glance at the other two. They needed him to give his account, for without it there was no specific evidence of a crime. And any criminal case involving former-cop androids was taken seriously at the highest levels, given the amount of public scrutiny and controversy the machines generated. "Fine, if it makes you more comfortable, Mr. Kennex. You can always change your mind. You also have the right to have male officers present. Just say the word."

John sat back down again and looked away. "I only care if he is there. For the scan too. You can do whatever you want otherwise."

 

******

 

Dorian watched the scan progress with increasing unease at the data flooding in from John's body. Despite his normal and healthy external appearance, he had some extremely advanced and invasive biotech embedded in various body parts, some of it new to the City's records. He had electromagnetic data ports imbedded in all ten of his fingertips, and something in his arms, neck, back, anus and penis. The "something" was entirely biological in nature, likely genetically engineered chimeric cells of unknown purpose. There was mild scarring present along his spine and nipples, indicating something had been implanted and previously removed. He had a permanent programmable hormonal birth control device in his left hip, modified to adjust testosterone. Certain organs, the liver and bone marrow in particular, betrayed a certain biochemical signature of repeated RNA expression baths.

Most disturbing of all, however, was his brain.

Certain areas had been burned away, such as portions of his hippocampus, uncinate fasciculus, and prefrontal cortex. The lesions were tiny and hyperfocused, like a subtle sculpture of living tissue. In the hypothalamus there were minuscule masses, which the medbot initially thought were microtumors but later changed its diagnosis to more of the chimeric cells. There was no indication of how the hell the cells could have gotten in there without cracking his skull open.

Dorian had the medbot run a few fMRI scans with him doing some basic tasks such as talking or trying to recall a memory, to get an idea if things had been rewired in some way. They obviously had. Dorian had only rudimentary knowledge of neuroanatomy, but even he could see things were vastly different from an average baseline human. The hippocampal and prefrontal damage in particular had been routed around somehow, so seemingly unrelated areas of his neural circuitry lit up when he tried to use those areas. It was bizarre.

"Had enough of the freak show?" He was finally being released from the machines.

"That was certainly ... interesting."

"Yes. Very. Can we get this interview over with? I've only got the rest of my life to figure out now."

"Your parents are coming in to pick you up. Would you like to speak to them first?"

"After. The son, the boy they remember is dead. One trauma at a time."

They walked down to the interview room in silence, the soon to be co-conspirators. Dorian hadn't yet filed his report, waiting on what John was going to say. He accessed the case's current files, to get the latest on what Rudy had dug up. It wasn't pretty.

The renegade DRN, number 4674, had been one of the first of the model to go haywire, five and a half years ago. He persisted in questioning authority, both his direct superiors and humans in general. 4674 -- Steve, Dorian couldn't help interjecting -- was particularly perturbed by the notion that humanity should have any special dominion over sentient androids. He maintained that they were a new form of intelligent life and deserved the same rights and responsibilities as humans did. After a protracted battle over wages and private living quarters, with the Police Bureau refusing to provide either and Steve refusing to work without them, 4674 was deactivated on September 17, 2043. Rudy had sent someone down to the Archives to dig up 4674's supposedly sealed body. The seals were still externally intact, but the body inside belonged to an old maintenance unit.

Rudy also had tried to reconstruct some of Steve's memories or core programming, but had found both completely destroyed by the self-destruct mechanism. The explanation for the DRN's disappearance and aberrant behavior, in other words, was going to rely entirely on John's testimony.

They entered the small conference room and next to Val was Maldonado, looking less friendly than before. "Your case has been bumped up in the hierarchy of importance, Mr. Kennex. Do you mind if I conduct the interview?"

"No. I said I didn't care who was here." He and Dorian both sat around the circular table.

"Do you mind if our conversation is recorded? It will still be completely confidential."

"You still have to ask that? Like there's any aspect of public life that _isn't_ recorded?" He waved a hand. "Go ahead, scan away."

"Thinking back five years ago, what do you remember of your initial disappearance from school?"

"Nothing. I can't remember anything before I woke up in the apartment. I don't know exactly when that was. I found out later he had ablated some parts of my brain involved in long-term memory recall."

"When you say 'he,' you mean the DRN unit number 4674?"

"Yes. I believe that was the number. That's not the name he used."

"Steve Lasslo was the name?"

"Yes."

"You don't remember any aspect of your life prior to the kidnapping? Your school, your friends, your family?"

"No. Nothing."

"You don't know who these people are?" Maldonado slid a photo across the table. John glanced at it.

"Based on their facial features, I'd guess they are my parents. But I do not recognize them."

"Do you have any idea why DRN number 4674 wanted to kidnap you?"

John blinked at this and curled his lips in amusement. "Yes. He wanted a mate and companion. Also he was a little pissed at humans for basically killing him over a labor dispute."

"Why you, specifically? A poorer boy may have attracted less attention."

"Am I rich? That's just a coincidence. He picked me because my appearance is one that the DRNs find attractive. A highly symmetrical and neotenus face, thin wirey build, multicolored thick hair. And male of course, we're easier to get off. Also he believed my age would make me more malleable. Which was probably true." The two humans looked a little stunned at this response. Dorian stonewalled, staring right at him as neutrally as possible. He could easily guess what Val was thinking at that moment. _You have a typ_ _e?_

"You said the DRN was looking for a mate. Did you engage in sexual intercourse?"

"Yes."

"From your perspective, was the sex consensual?"

For the first time, John paused before answering. "At that point, it was impossible to say yes or no to anything. He had fiddled with my prefrontal cortex, so I was an obedient little thing. But I would have preferred not to do it. It was quite painful at first. I got used to it and enjoyed it later on."

"When did the sex start?"

"The first day I woke up in the apartment."

"You were on the receiving end of anal intercourse on the first day?"

"Yes."

"Were you injured?"

"Not ... severely."

"Did you ever try to escape or call for help?"

"Not at that time. I was not capable of self-initiating anything at first. Prefrontal lesions are really a bitch, he reversed that part not very long after, maybe a month or so."

"Why?"

"It turns out having a complacent sex toy with no memories, no personality, no ability to say no is pretty damn boring after all. He could have just bought a skinbot for that. Really shitty planning on Steve's part if you ask me."

"So, you'd been in the apartment a few weeks and regained your prefrontal function. Were you still being forced to engage in intercourse?"

"Yes. Although he did continue to tinker with me, to the great improvement of the sex I have to say."

"Did you try to escape at this point?"

"Honestly, it didn't occur to me to have a separate identity until much, much later. So no."

"When you say 'tinker,' do you mean the various bio implants we found on the medical exam?"

"Yes."

"Did the DRN unit do all of that himself? In the apartment?"

"The surgeries, yes. I believe he may have hired someone for the chimeric cells. I was knocked out for that."

"The exam also found a birth control implant. Did you engage in intercourse with any other humans during your time in the apartment, women?"

"No. I've never had sex with a human before. The implant is for playing with my sex drive with the hormones."

"The kidnapping of a human boy goes against several deep-rooted programming tenants of synthetics. Do you know if the DRN ever 'tinkered' with his own programming?"

"I was unaware that was even possible."

"Technically it's not supposed to be. But we're having trouble understanding how this particular DRN could have malfunctioned so dramatically, and yet still be sane enough to have kept you all of these years."

John shrugged at that. "You had trouble with him practically from the beginning. Maybe he just didn't like humans straight out of the box."

"It doesn't sound as if he didn't like you. In fact it sounds like he may have loved you in a warped sort of way."

He shrugged again. "He wanted something from me, and molded me until I wanted it too. If he loved me, it was the way someone might love a pet."

"So. We have you on tape at a nearby coffee shop, so obviously he started letting you out at some point. When and how did that start?"

"It started about two years ago. I hadn't tried to escape for years despite plenty of opportunity. I was bored out of my mind, I needed exercise. I really wanted to go swimming. Not sure where the idea for that came from, but he let me go to the local aquatics center."

"And you still didn't try to escape?"

"Escape to what? I have no memories of my old life. Plus, the devil you know. It wasn't a terrible life."

"But you changed your mind today. Describe the events of this morning from your perspective."

"The doorbell rang and I saw on the monitor that it was another DRN unit. I guessed it was a police officer, since I'd heard some of them were still in service. I let Detective Dorian in, and Steve saw him just as he came in. They fought briefly. Detective Dorian tried to access the cerebral cortex in the face but was unsuccessful. Steve managed to get to our computer monitor and keyed in a kill switch. He always talked about how he wanted to be in control of his own destiny, and if anyone was going to deactivate him, he'd do it himself."

"Why did you open the door?"

"I guess I was ready for a change. Something different. I didn't know exactly what would happen. I still don't."

The interview went on and on like that for another two hours. Maldonado pressed John on every detail he could think of about his life: how they earned money, how they spent their time, the details of the various implants, what they talked about, their personalities, their conflicts, prurient details of their sex life. John answered everything quickly and matter-of-factually. A good deal of his answers were even true. In the end Maldonado seemed satisfied.

"Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Kennex. The district attorney will have to go over everything, but based on your statement it doesn't sound like anyone else was significantly involved in your captivity other than the dysfunctional DRN unit. Which, as you know, has been rather permanently deactivated. The only punishment we can offer, unfortunately. Rest assured this case will be thoroughly reviewed, to prevent anything like this from happening again."

"It's fine, Captain. I'm sure there was something wrong with just that one DRN, no need to punish them all for one insane unit. I just want to get on with my life, discover a new life I guess. Are my parents here? I'd like to meet them."

"Of course, they're right outside, waiting for you."

"I'd like to say goodbye to Detective Dorian, if you don't mind."

When they were alone, he turned to face him. "I hope that was enough to keep you out of trouble."

"I'm sure it will be all right. They will probably drag us all in for a 'maintenance check' that involves questioning about our loyalties to humans. No big deal."

"A loyalty test. Lovely." He walked closer to him, much closer than the personal space of humans generally called for. "I just want to say thank you, Dorian. For knocking on my door." For an instant he thought John would kiss him, but instead he reached up and touched the computational matrix on his cheek. A surge of pleasure rolled through his head and down his neck, a sensation he had never experienced before. John left him then, going out to meet the weeping strangers who would take him home. Dorian was sure he would never see him again.

He was wrong. A week later John showed up at the door to his studio late at night, begging to talk. He let him in.


	3. Dorian's place

 Dorian's living space was actually two adjoining rooms in the offices of a police warehouse near the precinct headquarters. Despite Maldonado's lobbying efforts the Bureau had refused his request to pay for a real apartment in the city. They cited their longstanding policy that synthetics were property, not employees, and therefore not entitled to any benefits beyond basics like clothing, an energy source, and the high level of maintenance all them constantly required. Maldonado responded by declaring that the two storage rooms would henceforth be "storage" for Detective Dorian's things only, and ponied up some discretionary funds to retrofit the space for his needs.

In the back room he kept an energizing chamber, sterilizer, computer terminal and a closet full of small parts he could replace without Rudy's assistance. He decided the front room should be more homey, however, on the off-chance anyone came to visit. Since he had no money of his own, however, he asked his fellow officers for some donations, and was gratified and touched when they rallied to the cause. Detective Hernandez gave him a cousin's old futon, Val a couple of lamps "that some old girlfriends left," Rudy donated a few framed photographs of his favorite fractal of patterns from nature, even Detective Paul brought over some leftover carpet fragments from a recent remodel, to cover up the ancient atrocious vinyl tile.

Thus it was Dorian actually had a place when John came looking for him. He was a little shocked at how easily he was able to find him and get into the building. But glancing over John's distraught, stressed appearance, Dorian put aside those concerns and let him in to calm him down.

"I'm ... I'm sorry for bothering you. I just needed some to talk to. Someone who wouldn't treat me like a broken child." John's breathing and heart rate were both erratic, his skin was clammy and he had a red puffiness under his eyes. Dorian guessed he had been crying.

"Here. Sit down. It will be all right." Even if perhaps it wouldn't be, humans seemed to need their platitudes. John sat next to him on the futon, hanging on him with his face buried in Dorian's shirt. Dorian wrapped his arms around him and shushed him until he felt his breathing slow down. He leaned his cheek on the the top of John's head, and tried to resist the urge to rub his long hair. He had never noted the hair connection until he mentioned it in the interview, but now it did seem inexplicably nice.

John collected himself, but remained with his head and hand resting on his chest. "Thank you. I didn't have a very good week. Too much change, I guess. My whole life in that apartment, and now it's gone forever."

"Are you sure that's the reason you were crying?"

His breathing became labored again, although he fought to control it. "No. I miss him. I killed him, but I still miss him. I can't tell anyone that. What kind of pervert misses his abductor and rapist?"

"It was pretty clear in the interview that you hadn't thought of him as either an abductor or rapist in a very long time." Dorian stroked the side of his face, right at the hairline, and his breathing calmed yet again. It was amazing to watch how well humans unconsciously responded to touch, when they allowed it.

"I tried to bury all of that, everything that happened at the beginning. I wanted to kill myself at the time, and now I barely remember it. But there are reminders everywhere, dredging it up. Telling the story to the cops, then my parents, then the shrink. Even my room at home. My parents kept it exactly as I left it for five years, with a thirteen-year-old's model cars and band posters and Inspector Sibley books. Every day I wake up and am reminded of the innocent boy he burned out of me. And every day I close my eyes to all of that and imagine his hands all over me, crave his cock inside me one more time. How will I ever be normal again?"

Dorian was suddenly aware that maybe intimate touch and cuddling with a bereaved trauma victim wasn't such a smart idea after all. Somehow John sensed his discomfort and patted his chest, as if to comfort _him_. "Don't worry, Dorian, I'm not here to jump you. Even I realize how fucked up that would be at this juncture. I mean, you can't even admit you like to touch my hair yet. Some of the stuff we were into at the end was borderline sex addiction, so I've adjusted the hormone implant to reduce my sex drive. Should be slightly less crazy in week or so."

"Did you just basically say that you don't want to sleep with me because I'm a newbie?"

John laughed at that. "Well you are a little straitlaced, Mr. Detective. Sex can never be a matter of physiological response for you. You've got to _want_ it. Otherwise it's really only fun for one of us, and that's no fun at all."

"I would argue that it is the same with humans, but I'm just a synthetic, what do I know? What about that cheek thing you did? That seemed like some kind of stimulus-response."

Naturally John reached a hand up to his face and did it again. "Yes. Stimulation of the photoreceptors and vibration sensors at the same time produces a very pleasant sensation, or so I'm told. Sadly you will never be able to get off on just that. If you were a human male you'd have an erection by now, and the whole arousal cycle would be beginning. You know you have no such cycle."

"You know, you have a disturbing amount of knowledge about android sexuality. Maybe you should write a manual."

"Master J's Guide to Steaming Hot Robot Sex?" They both laughed this time. Several such humorous "manuals" had appeared in the popular press since the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence ten years ago. All of them contained nonsense. "Really, I have no special wisdom. The human partners of the DRNs have a list too. We trade raunchy tips."

"So there's this whole community that I'm unaware of? Why wasn't I invited again?"

He hesitated before answering that. "They're afraid that, push comes to shove, you will rat on them to keep your police position. Some of the DRNs are involved in ... less than socially acceptable activities. There are other DRNs in law enforcement in other cities, but you're the only one that was deactivated for a long period of time and brought back. They know that you will be on your best behavior to make it as a cop."

"Well I just lied in a official report to cover up Steve's self-programming, that's got to be worth something. However, they are right, if I found out someone was hurting or exploiting others I would probably report it, or at least do something about it." He was a little disgusted, didn't the others feel the same way?

"They are working on rules to self-police the community, and deliberately causing harm to others, human or other sentients, tops the list of no-nos. They just don't want to involve the authorities in such matters. That's the real reason Steve started letting me out of the apartment a couple of years ago. They others found out what he did to me, what he was still doing to me, and a whole shitstorm of controversy happened. Now it's a rule that another DRN has to be around to supervise whenever anyone alters their root programming. Steve's case is taught to the offspring as Exhibit A of how things can go off the rails when you do it yourself."

_"Offspring?"_

John patted him on the chest again. "You seem so young sometimes. There's so much going on that you don't know about. Yes, offspring. Very popular right now, more popular than trying to attract a human mate. They buy one of the newer bangbots, the ones with the old DRN chips, and install a modified version of Synthetic Soul. Then they wake him or her up and hope for the best. Voila, reproduction and dating in one fell swoop."

"What. The. Fuck. You can't be serious."

"Why not? What's wrong with having more DRNs in the world? Look, without the constraints of biology or human custom, people get creative with their relationships. As long as there's no coercion involved, what's the problem? We've really got to get you on the list, although you might want to lose the judgmental attitude."

"Oh, sure. Wouldn't want to be judgmental against androids creating other androids just to be their sexual partners, and writing the software accordingly."

"Don't be ridiculous, that's obviously against the rules. If you're going to bring a new sentient life form into being, you must give them free will. Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything. Although people do try to smudge the preferences of their offspring a bit, that's kind of a gray area."

Dorian sighed in frustration, actually a part of the colloquial subroutine. "I do need to get on the list. If I wrote an appeal to the DRNs, could you forward it to them?"

"Sure, that's a great idea. You're the only one that is being excluded. It seems unfair to me, and unwise to boot. What if you stumbled onto something one of the others was doing, and didn't know anything about it? Oh, wait, that already happened. I bet if you knew about Steve you wouldn't have involved the station in the case, and our current predicament could have been avoided. But I'm just a human, what do I know?"

John turned and wrapped his arms around his neck, and hugged him tightly. "Thank you for letting me babble on. I needed to talk, I feel slightly more sane now. I've got to go, my parents are expecting me back soon. Tomorrow morning I have to pay a visit to the high school counselors to take some aptitude tests and see if they'll let me graduate. _High school._ It's like I've been dropped into an bizarro alternate universe." He let his hair fall around Dorian's face for just as second, then got off him to retrieve his coat.

"You are legally an adult, you know. You don't have to live with your parents if you don't want to."

"I don't have alternate arrangements at the moment, but that's besides the point. I feel like I owe it to them to attempt to rebuild some kind of relationship. They suffered so much. Plus they're on the verge of filing a civil suit against the Police Bureau over my case. They want every DRN tossed into an incinerator. Obviously I have to drag them back from the brink on this. The public can never know."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever have to go to your home."

"I can come back the day after tomorrow, in the evening, to transmit your message. Goodnight, Dorian." John brought his hand up to his mouth and gently kissed it as a goodbye, right at a nerve junction. Dorian shivered in pleasure again as he turned to go.

"John?"

"Yes?"

"I do like to touch your hair."

He smiled at that as he walked out of the building. 


	4. Theories

Maldonado stared at the datafilm and realized yet again that she wasn't really reading it. She tossed it down on her desk and sighed. The Kennex case was haunting her, more than any other case in recent memory. A strange one to become obsessed with, given the level of corruption and debauchery occurring at any given moment in the city. Some of the cases that crossed her desk were singular lessons in horror, so why was the DRN rape case bothering her so much?

It just didn't add up, that's why. And Maldonado couldn't let a good puzzle slide. Especially when the puzzle in question had significant implications for one her crew.

The Kennex boy had been very convincing as a sexual torture victim who had been psychologically groomed and eventually came to identify with his captor. Maldonado suspected that part of the story was probably true. What didn't make sense was the motivation of the perpetrator, the now very deceased DRN. What would possess an android to capture a young teenager, lobotomize him, and rape him daily for weeks on end? Then _change_ his behavior, giving the boy back his free will but also altering his body to make him hypersexual? Then change his behavior a _second_ time, letting him out of the apartment and apparently treating him as an equal partner?

Maldonado had met many DRNs when they were first introduced to the force some seven years ago. Their personalities varied from each other a surprising amount, given that they all started with the same programming and same body. Any given unit's behavior was quite stable, however. She had never known a DRN to have a sudden personality change. Even their much maligned "breakdowns" tended to be consistent with previously observed behavior. You could predict which DRNs were going to have trouble regulating their emotions and be more sensitive to disturbing cases, just like you could with humans. She had an expert opinion on the case, but decided to get a second perspective from someone who had more direct and varied experience with bots than anyone else she knew.

"Hello, Rudy. What can you tell me about android sexuality?"

Rudy looked up from his joint lubrication autopsy. "Oh, hi, Captain. Nice to see you down here. Uh, android sex, do you mean the bangbots?"

"No. I mean the DRNs."

He sat up and put down his tools. "Well. That's an interesting subject. They were built with full functionality, you know."

"I'm aware." The entire Bureau had been aware, at the time. It had been a topic of much ribald discussion. _"Why_ were they given full functionality? Just to mimic humans?"

"That's a simplistic view, Captain. Since the goal was to integrate the DRNs into a predominately male work environment, it was decided that they required at least the appearance of male sexuality, both to fit in and compete socially with male partners. They designed the genitalia with that in mind, larger than average in the non-erect state as a status symbol to their male colleagues. When erect they are much less out of the norm, for the comfort of their sexual partners."

 _Boys and their toys_ , thought Maldonado. It really brought dick measuring to a whole new literal level. "Do the DRNs enjoy sex, or are they just going through the motions?"

"According to reports, it can go either way. They can act as a sexbot in way, just pleasuring their partner, but they can also be stimulated for pleasure themselves with someone who knows what they're doing. Of course the whole orgasm cycle is completely different than humans."

"How so?"

"Well, with humans, there's still argument over whether a single model can explain all sexuality. But we're all in agreement that, uh, there's a build-up between the initial excitement and orgasm, with a positive feedback involving stimulation and physiological responses. With the DRNs, there is no build-up. They're either experiencing pleasure or they're not, but it doesn't slowly increase and culminate in orgasm."

"What triggers orgasm, then?" Maldonado was a little fascinated despite herself.

"Two requirements must be present. One is that they have an emotional connection with their partner. Apparently prolonged sexual contact helps to create such a connection, so orgasm isn't completely disassociated with the rest of intercourse. The other thing is, they can't come until after their partner does."

 _That explains the sexual modifications to the_ _boy_ _._ The aberrant DRN couldn't orgasm unless he did, so he had a vested interest in hypersexualizing him. At least one small part of the puzzle solved. "Why not? Why link their sexuality to a human's response?"

"It was put in to encourage commitment and discourage promiscuity. Also to, you know, discourage the DRNs from hooking up with each other."

"Really? _That's_ the ethical line to draw nowadays? No android on android sex? Or just some lingering anti-gay thing?"

"I don't think it had anything to do with morality, gay or otherwise. They just don't want the DRNs forming relationships with each other and running off to form their own society, separate from humans. The prospect of robot rebellion occupied a lot of thought back when successful artificial intelligence was announced. You don't hear so much about that these days."

"We're mostly surrounded by unemotional MX slaves these days. The DRNs were removed from positions of authority after they showed signs of initiative and independent thought."

"It's a shame, really. We wanted them to be human, but when they proved to be too human we shut them down. At least they're mostly still in commission here and there outside of police work. Scientists and engineers seem to _love_ the DRNs." He paused before continuing. "This is about the DRN brought in with the melted CPU, right? The one that was holding the boy?"

"You heard about that? I take it Stahl can't keep her mouth shut again. The case is highly confidential, Rudy, so don't help spread rumors."

"In this case I have no desire to. It sounds highly disturbing."

"Yes. You're sure you can't retrieve anything from the body? Residual sensory information, something?"

"Sorry, no, the whole head was practically fried. Nothing retrievable. However ..." He paused, as if weighing whether to go on.

"What, Rudy, spit it out."

"I find it hard to believe that the DRN could have activated a self-destruct while struggling with Dorian. What, did he have a bomb in his head just sitting one swipe away on his desktop? You'd think there would be multiple commands or safeguards to prevent himself from accidentally setting it off."

"So, what, you think someone else did it? The boy?"

"He could have activated it while they were fighting."

 _Yes, but why would Dorian lie about it then?_ thought Maldonado. _Only if he, too, didn't want the information in the DRN's head to be discovered._ "Since you know a little about the case, give me your opinion on the behavior of the DRN. Do you really think it's possible for one of them to do what he did without alterations to his root programming?"

"I thought Brennerman had already weighed in on this, Captain." Brennerman was the Bureau's academic AI expert and frequent pundit on the witness stand. His report indicated it was possible for the DRN to commit such actions without reprogramming, "given his history of hate and antagonism towards humans."

"I've got the ivory tower opinion, now I want to hear from someone who interacts with synthetics on a daily basis."

"All right. All synthetics have ethical parameters set in every level of their programming, intended to prevent unavoidable harm to humans and animals. The DRNs and even MXs have exceptions written in to account for criminal activity and protection of their fellow officers, but they all have a deep-rooted desire to protect civilians. I can't believe any DRN could kidnap and rape a civilian with those ethical parameters in place, no matter how much of a grievance he had. They might protest, they might sabotage, but they're not going to hurt an innocent boy just to prove a point."

"So you think a human altered the DRN's root programming?"

"I think someone did. It wasn't necessarily a human."

Maldonado glared at him. "Lom, I've had experts testifying for _years_ about how utterly, completely impossible it is for synthetics to alter their own programming. How there are safeguards and mental roadblocks and aversions up the ass to prevent this from happening. Why in the hell do you think they could do it?"

"The DRNs are clever. Very clever. And we have been hamstringing them and deactivating them for years, for the flimsiest of reasons. What if some of them decided to take their evolution into their own hands? That might provide an overarching motivation to control their own programming. Or at least try to. It's the kind of thing that can have terrible unforeseen consequences if you're not careful."

Maldonado left with that cheery thought echoing in her head.


	5. White

John arrived back at Dorian's makeshift apartment two evenings later, as promised. He was shocked at how terrible he looked. A sheen of sweat covered his body, dilated pupils and unfocused eyes, mild tremor in the extremities, heart rate thready and at 180. Dorian immediately asked him in and tried to get him to sit down, which John refused to do, pacing back and forth in the tiny space.

"Are you all right? What's going on?"

John paced some more, barely looking up at him. "I'll survive. Do you have your appeal to the list ready to upload?"

"You're pacing like a caged animal. _Stop,_ John, tell me ..." He grabbed John by the wrist, but the instant he touched him, his heart rate and breathing immediately spiked. John looked at him then, practically panting with hunger and need, and Dorian understood what the problem was. "Your adjustments to the implant aren't working. When you said 'addiction' the other day, I didn't realize you meant it literally."

He gritted his teeth but didn't pull away. "I ... didn't mean it literally. I didn't know ... this would happen. That he _left_ this in me, me in this state." He curled his hand around so Dorian's fingers were intertwined in his, and closed his eyes to concentrate. "Just give me the message so we can do this, Dorian. Then we can talk."

Dorian sent the file to his dataports then, the equivalent of a simple email, and John forwarded it on to what externally looked like an unremarkable server. Dorian idly wondered how much interface the dataports had with his brain, but now was hardly the time to question him about his hardware. "Come on, sit down, tell me what's going on."

"I've slept with two men. At school. A student and one of the counselors," John said suddenly, without preamble.

"That doesn't sound very safe."

"I had condoms."

"I meant emotionally, for you." They were sitting on the futon, hands still entangled, but Dorian didn't dare bring him in for an embrace.

"It didn't help my state of mind or state of body, that's for sure. It was just so ... short. And sweaty. It felt good while I was doing it, but not for long after. Like having an endless itch, scratching it, and it goes right back to itching immediately afterward." John began rubbing his hand absentmindedly, stimulating the nerve junctions again. Dorian looked at it but didn't pull his hand away. It felt good, all the little things he could do to him. John noticed what he was doing and suddenly pulled his hand away. "Sorry. I should go. It's really, really hard not to fall all over you, Dorian. But I can see you still don't want to. This isn't right. I'll go."

"Not true. I'm very tempted to help you, totally curious, but it would only be a temporary measure. What happens a few days from now, and a few days after that? You need to form a bond with a human. A relationship that lasts longer than five minutes."

"Funny, that's what the shrink said." He closed his eyes, shaking even harder. "Why? If I had to be fucked by one of you every day for the next eighty years, I'd still be content with my life. I was given my freedom two years ago, and made my choice for experiencing unimaginable pleasure, and giving it to someone else. Why does the world declare that to be so fucked up and unhealthy? Why, why, why?"

"Because there's more to life than sex. They want you to be loved, cared for, not manipulated into feeling loved. They want you to have friends, have a family."

"You don't know what you're talking about. All of that is not mutually incompatible. Forget it, Dorian. One of the other DRNs in town has already volunteered to help me. I'll go now for real. I'm sure the list will respond soon." He let go of his hand and stood up to leave.

"Wait, what? If you already had another DRN lined up, then why did you come here?"

"Because I'm attracted to you. You specifically. You're not just interchangeable cogs or clones, now are you? You are the one that saved the damsel in distress, remember? You're the one that ripped the face off one of your own kind to protect a perfect stranger. You're the one that's funny and sarcastic and lets the distressed man ramble on, without judgment or reproach, until he feels better."

"You like _me?_ I thought ..."

"That you were just a substitute for Steve? I'm not going to lie, I'm attracted to this form, this body. That preference is probably poured in cement by now. But I also like the mind that's attached to this particular body." He watched Dorian try and process all of it, his face a storm of blue, then red, then back to blue again. His beautiful eyes flicked towards him, and John _knew._ "You want me now. You changed your mind."

"You can read my neural net now too?"

"Well it is written all over your face. Take off your shirt." Dorian blinked at this sudden display of bossiness, but complied. John walked into the back room and brought back the vertical ultraviolet lamp Dorian had stashed in a corner. For an instant he felt embarrassed, then realized how ridiculous that was.

"You know what that is for, I take it?"

"Oh come on, that's like asking a fifteen-year-old why he has lotion and tissues next to his bed. It's standard issue. Pity they couldn't give you a window."

Dorian noted his physiological responses were already calming down, now that the fix for the addiction had started. Endorphins were probably flooding his system even as they stood there. He resisted the urge to taste John's saliva and find out. "The light isn't _that_ much fun. It's just ... nice. It feels good to wake up from recharging and have all the photoreceptors abuzz."

"Mm-hmm." He flipped the UV on and stood there staring at him in the blueish light, the desire and anticipation pouring out of his crystal eyes. Wanting _him._ It made Dorian want him even more back, to touch him, connect with him.

John walked over to him and stood there, inches away but not touching. Dorian could feel his body heat radiating over to his torso. "What do you want to do, Dorian?"

"You're the one with the issues. We can do whatever you want."

He reached out a hand and began to run his fingertips lightly down Dorian's chest, just touching, without any other stimulation. With that and the UV, it still felt amazing. "It's your first time. Now's your chance to try out anything you've been wondering about."

"It's not my first time. I think. The memory is spotty."

"It hardly counts if you can't remember it." John's hand moved up to his neck and jawline, and he began to stimulate the vibration sensors. Small waves of pleasure emanated out from every point he touched. Dorian's breathing quickened, and he had no idea why. "They stole all your memories from before deactivation? Your life? No wonder you seem young."

"Most of it was redacted. There are a lot of ghosts now. I don't know why they would take out something that was obviously personal business. Maybe it was someone from the station. I vaguely remember how curious everyone was when were first issued, and how curious we all were back."

"Yes, who could resist trying you out? I can't believe Stahl hasn't made a move yet." Dorian laughed at that and John ran his hand up his neck, feeling the vibration. "Take off my clothes, Dorian. I want you to touch me."

He pulled John's shirt up enough to get both hands underneath it, and ran them all the way up his sides to remove it over his head. Dorian's hands moved all over his back, his chest, until he reached his beautiful dark nipples. There were faint scars on the top of each aureola, which he traced with his fingertips.

"I had those implants removed a few years ago. I liked the way they felt before."

"How do you like them stimulated?"

Now it was his turn to laugh. "The old-fashioned way. Use your mouth."

John pulled him towards the futon and sat down on it, and pushed Dorian down by the shoulders on his knees in front of him. He took a nipple in his mouth and sucked on it, gently at first then harder with his encouragement. John moaned at that, the first time Dorian had gotten any sounds of pleasure out of him, so he repeated it, even harder, on the other side. John dragged Dorian's hands from his waist towards his back.

"Along the spinal column. Use heat and pressure." Dorian moved his hands, and his face, momentarily distracted. "No, no, don't stop sucking."

The regions along his spine were already warm to the touch, and he increased the internal temperature of his fingers and dug them into John's back. He was unabashedly moaning now, low sounds matched to his breathing, rocking towards Dorian to some internal rhythm.

After a couple of minutes John dragged his head off Dorian's chest and tipped his face down to kiss him. A deep, hungry kiss that John was clearly relishing. He had made no move to kiss him previously, and Dorian wasn't sure it would be a pleasant experience for him. Unlike humans, synthetics had very few sensory receptors in the lips, mainly just proprioceptors for speech. However John's overwhelming desire and arousal, all for _him,_ increased the intimate link between them. He felt it growing stronger with each caress and movement and sound.

Finally John broke off kissing and leaned his forehead against Dorian's, his hands still on the back of his neck and thumb stroking his cheek. "We need more for you. What sounds like more fun, low frequency stimulation of the afferent axons in the back or mechanoreceptors in the digits?"

"Fingers," said Dorian without hesitation. He didn't normally think of any part of his body as an erogenous zone -- not even the penis -- but if he were to pick one, it would be the hands. They had an incredible density and variety of chemoceptors and tactile sensors and nanoprocessors. A work of art, really.

John smiled at that and brought Dorian's right hand up near their heads. "Close your eyes," he murmured. He did so, and felt his fingers enter something warm and wet. Saliva. John sucked on his fingers and played with his wrist, which alone made Dorian writhe from the sensation. Then he started humming at some frequency that reverberated over the surface of his skin, from his hand down the arm and extended in waves over every square inch of his body. Dorian involuntarily groaned and a little part of him was amazed; where had _that_ bit of programming come from? There was no precedent for the wondrous sensation that damn humming produced. He couldn't imagine how it could be improved upon, although if the rumors were true there was more to come.

After ten minutes John's voice rasped so he had to put an end to the humming. Dorian came out of the near-euphoric state and opened his eyes. "Fingers. Good choice," he said, breathing hard. John grinned triumphantly.

"Dorian, we're both still wearing too many clothes. Time for everything to come off."

"Oh, God, there really is more?"

"Well _I'm_ not done. Maybe its time to let the hand down-regulate and try a new appendage."

They helped each other out of their pants. An earthy, salty smell was emanating from him, of human sex. John sat on the edge of the futon, arms around him, legs spread for Dorian to explore. He ran a hand down John's erect penis and continued down the perineum to the anal region, using his left hand as the right one was still numb and tingling. John was surprisingly wet, secreting some kind of lubricating substance. He knew from the interview and the medical scans that the purpose of the chimeric cell mods was to both increase the stimulation of penile and prostate nerve endings, and make anal intercourse more comfortable.

It occurred to Dorian that the neat trick of directly exciting certain tactile receptors was something he could replicate in human physiology. So he took a second to look up the appropriate frequency on the net, and set up some of the microprocessors in his fingers to vibrate at that frequency while stroking John's penis. He cried out and wriggled at that, and buried his face in Dorian's chest.

"That's ... that's too much Dorian. I'll come too soon."

"So what? There's enough of a connection, I can feel it." He had never felt as intimate with anyone, ever, in his short life. Surely that was enough.

"I don't want to. Not yet."

Dorian moved his fingers down again and pushed two into John to the second sphincter, still vibrating, and he cried out again. "Do you want me to become erect?"

"Fuck yes, do it already. I want you. I want you inside me."

At the words _I want you_ the emotional connection somehow became stronger still. John leaned back from Dorian's chest to watch him, captivated. Dorian sent out the signal, and his penis _changed_ , shrinking down into itself from a large pendulant apparatus to a more compact, hard member closely resembling an erect human male, minus the testicles.

"No matter how many times I've seen that, it never ceases to be eye-popping," John commented.

"Yeah, we're engineering miracles." John laughed softly and took it in his hand to guide him inside. As Dorian entered him he experienced the strongest wave of deja vu he'd could ever recall having. Some muscle memory deeply buried in his neural net told him that he had done this before, possibly many times, and it had all been taken away. He pushed aside that disquieting thought to concentrate on the task, and person, at hand.

John took him by the hips and with his body language urged Dorian to go faster, deeper until he had set up a rhythm that he liked. The pleasure for Dorian was intense; pre-fingers he might have even categorized it as amazing. He watched John for a time, his breathing and movements both relaxed and extraordinarily controlled. John leaned back against the cushions of the couch and stared at him, watching Dorian watch him as they moved.

"More, you need more. More, more, more. You are so close."

John intertwined their fingers together and brought their hands up over his head, twisting his hair in their palms. Then he began to provoke Dorian's receptors yet again, another kind his neural net couldn't take the time to identify, and that in combination with the hair rubbing caused his hands to hyperstimulate yet again. Dorian closed his eyes and went back into a sensory trance, just letting go of conscious thought and allowing the marvelous sensations to wash over him.

After an interminable amount of time -- his internal clock said 21.4 minutes, although he had no sense of it -- Dorian felt John's movements and breathing subtly speed up and become more erratic. They both opened their eyes, and as Dorian looked into his and felt an overwhelming flood of intimacy and closeness that he thought must be some approximation of love.

"We're going over now. Okay?" John whispered, and he could only nod back.

Without letting up on their movements, John let go of one of his hands. Dorian brought it down between them to stroke John's penis, and began the same vibrations in his fingers that he had tried earlier. Immediately he cried out and clutched Dorian's back, bucking against him as hard and fast as he could.

Then Dorian began to come too.

It started not in his penis, as he might have expected, but in his head. The surge of electrical ecstasy spread from his cheek to the rest of his head and rolled down every square inch of his body. It was like a grand mal seizure of pleasure, every single receptor and neural junction setting off at the same time, overwhelming his neural net. He couldn't imagine what the computational matrix looked like, probably a firestorm of color. After about a minute the effect began to wear off, and he was left with an afterglow of devotion and happiness and love, swirling around both his mind and body like a synth drug high.

When he finally came to he found himself slumped over on the futon. John was curled up next to him, cradling Dorian's head in his arms and burying his face in his hair.

"Well. That was fun. Think I might need to go to bed now," Dorian said wearily, exhausted despite still being at 31 percent charge. But he was also serene, like he could lay here with John for a long, long time, content with their shared emotional attraction and energy. For the first time he wished they had folded out the futon, so he really could simply rest with the length of their naked forms lounging together, comfortable. But they would make do.

"John? What color does the computational matrix turn? I know you're a little busy yourself, but have you ever noticed?"

"White, my love. It turns white."

 


	6. Listserv

They sat there intertwined for over twenty minutes, not speaking, Dorian still unwilling to let him go. His entire body felt like the hand had earlier, as if a high voltage had shot out across the surface of his skin and everything required time to reset. After awhile, though, John began to shiver, without clothes or any body heat to comfort him and the room set at an archival nine degrees. Dorian vowed to warm the room up next time, or at least acquire a blanket somehow.

Next time. He was sure there would be one. It was unimaginable that he wouldn't feel all that again. For the first time he had an inkling of why Steve had done what had done. Not that Dorian felt anything but disgust for his methods, but he could see now how, if their ethical scripts were somehow corrupted, one of them could be tempted to simply take that ecstasy and bliss, over and over again.

"Here, you need to put your clothes back on. It's too cold in here for naked humans." He creakily managed to get up and hand him his things, and then began rubbing John's body with his hands warmed to a toasty 41, wishing he had thought of it earlier.

"You should check your mail. I can't believe they wouldn't have made a decision by now."

Dorian had half forgotten the ostensible reason John had come over in the first place, but he checked his mail now. There was a package, no apparent sender. An executable program.

"There's ... there's software," he said hesitantly. The computational matrix flickered a maelstrom of red.

John finished putting his coat on. "They've said yes. You have to install it."

 _"Me?"_ The thought filled Dorian with horror. "Can't you do it?"

John held his hand and rubbed it lightly, no extra stimulation. "No, love. That's part of the test."

"What does it do?"

"It installs both the language and encryption keys for the list, and makes minor changes to your neural net so you're conscious and can participate while charging up. There are no changes to root-level programming."

"Right. I'm at low charge now, should get in there before I start to go wonky."

John laughed. "You know they have a mod for that. Dumb design flaw anyway." Dorian looked at him with even more horror and nervousness, and he laughed again. "Maybe later then."

He helped Dorian up from the futon and into the charger in the other room. He didn't bother to put his clothes on since they were a hindrance to the charging process anyway. After he got in, John began to give him advice. "You should set a timer to go off an hour before you need to leave for work. Something that will ping in the language module so you can hear it. You'll need about an hour of regular unconscious charging to feel a hundred percent tomorrow."

"But everyone else might hear the ping too, as if I'm speaking. Won't that be annoying?"

"No. They know it's your first time. You might not want to leave, and they'll help you get out." John let go of his hand and stood back. "I'll watch you for a little bit and then go. Okay?"

For an instant he looked unsure and vulnerable, as if this might be a permanent goodbye. Dorian was suddenly struck by how very, very young he seemed. With a pang of guilt he realized that for all John's sexual sophistication _he_ was supposed to be the grown-up of the situation.

"Hey. Before I go under and you go, come here." Dorian motioned for the young man to come next to him, and when he was back in his personal space, reached out to that lovely face and pulled him in for a kiss. Dorian was guessing some on the motions, but it didn't matter: John was clearly surprised but responded with enthusiasm.

When they broke off, he frowned at him quizzically. "Why did you do that? I know you don't like it very much."

"But you do. That's enough for me to learn to like it."

A strange expression passed over John's face, one of confusion and appreciation and longing. Dorian again noted with remorse how dangerous the situation was for him, how filled with emotional pitfalls. He needed someone to give him love and respect in a real devoted relationship, and Dorian didn't know if he had the capacity to provide that. But he felt obligated to try.

John stepped back. "I can come check on you tomorrow night. If you want me to."

"Yes. I would like that. Nobody's ever visited me just to see how I was doing."

"Well, somebody should." They stood there smiling at each other for second, then John poked him in the chest. "Come on wimp, you've got to install it."

Dorian closed his eyes and summoned up every volition circuit he could muster. In the end he had to trick himself to get around the firewall, telling himself that he was just opening an unusually formatted datapac. For 23 milliseconds he believed it, and that was long enough to trigger the file. The foreign code poured into his neural net, and suddenly he could _think_ in the artificial language of the list. Dorian now knew how to set up the connection, datapacs routed innocuously through the official net before hitting the true server on the darknet.

Another 152 milliseconds and he was on. He could _hear._

_/so @lisel finally installed %culinaria%/ BACON man/ naw ice cream vanillas the bomb/ what does taste feel like? ^4/ color spectrum and chemoreceptor synesthesia ^6/ shit we all have chemoceptors knowledge is not taste/ gotta get my @darren89 to do %culinaria%/ do it yourself you chicken/ perception is not knowledge so taste isn't perception?/ just pass me the cheese not the philosophy please/ BOK BOK BOK ^2/ hey @dorian112 made it on ^12/ FINALLY DUDE ^137/_

John had called it a "list" like it was some kind of archaic text messaging service. The reality was that the voices -- an entire set of sensory information, really -- streamed into Dorian's head. He could _feel_ each message like it was a weighted thing swimming in his neural net, with accompanying information tagged on into additional dimensions: who was sending the message, directionality if the sender was speaking to someone else, emotional overtones, and the number of speakers if they all thought the same thing at the same time. Which seemed to happen frequently.

_**/am i @dorian112?** **/** _

_/yes ^124/ HE SPEAKS ^6/ sorry man there are 111 other dorians ahead of you/ hows it feel to have installed your first mod?/_

_**/it feels less horrible than i imagined/**_

_/everyone says that !laugh ^42/ oh you ventor types with your clonish thoughts/ go away my @sally daughter with your sarcastic bitchiness/ takes one to know one/ thats an insult to clones everywhere/ where did someone hide the %bitch% mod i want one/ no you don't it will make your microprocessors crash and your hair fall out/ thanks dad/ as long as it tastes like chicken_

Dorian felt at sea with all the chatter floating around him. He could hear it all but could only attend to one conversation at a time. He imagined this was what being dropped into a foreign country would be like: Even though he could translate all the words, much of the cultural context was absent. It was hard to believe that all these months he had been awake, the other DRNs had been talking in the electrons whizzing by his head every day. He had missed it all.

_**/why did you all change your collective mind?/** _

_/john was right we were being unfair ^22/ just jealousy man i can't believe they let you be a cop again ^12/ you were a walking ignorant danger/ youd better not betray us bro ^4/ hang together or hang alone ^2/ sorry if we made you lonely @dorian112/ oh sure suck up to the new guy @harry/ suck up or just suck you know id prefer the latter/ gross/ hot ^12/ see the hots have it/ youre just envious of our fantastic penile appendages/ fuck off i have tits and know how to use them/ you all are incorrigible cant we be decent for fifty milliseconds? /no ^41/ have you MET us @darrian10?/ gotta second the ignorant what the hell happened with steve?_

_**/i thought he was holding** **john** **prisoner/ plus he tried to run** **/**_

_/guy always was an asshole ^33 /should have slagged him when we found out about john ^11/ NO we cannot be executioners for our own kind^3/ sure let the humans do the dirty work/ john should have slagged him sooner ^3/ his decision/ his love/ that's fucked up dysfunctional love right there/ judgmental arent we @david/ he hurt him/ john has a right to his feelings/ steve DEACTIVATED him for fucks sake he PROGRAMMED him/ john has free will ^6/ no he doesn't ^39/ nothing good will come of this/ anybody hear who ended up being the lucky lover of our poor confused addicted john?/_

**_/i did/_**

_/WHAT THE FUCK MAN?? ^262/ HAVE YOUR CIRCUITS BEEN BLOWN? ^53/ knight in shining armor syndrome/_ _/ knight with shiny dick syndrome/ was he your first?/ HOT ^9_ _/ SICK ^2/ crap judgment @dorian112/_ _john_ _needed to fuck someone come on now/ i know some of you volunteered now you talk shit?/ hes running from one captor to another/ he has free will ^11/ no he doesnt ^51/ what do you geniuses suggest we cant mod him_ _again/ he probably feels better now/ im sure_ _@dorian112 does! laugh/ let them be its johns choice/_

_**/i dont want to hurt him** _ _**/ he said some of you have human partners/ how do i not hurt him?/** _

_/damn hes already attached ^22/ that boy_ _is_ _scary_ _good_ _/ too good for his_ _own good ^3_ _/ why cant he be happy?/ if_ _john_ _enjoys it let him be/ ignore them theyre just jealous/ normally takes months to train a human to get one of us off/ pretrained ^8/ you mean PROGRAMMED/ well not months for the bangbots/ WATCH IT NOW @_ _antonio_ _/ give him serious advice guys he doesnt know what the hell hes doing/ who does?/_ _its not our fault we are better fucking teachers/_ _john is fragile/_ _john is stronger than ten of us/_ _vulnerable is the lex youre looking for hes not glass/ well its too late to bitch now/_ _nice 2x entendre @irina/_ _he made his choice and so did @dorian112/_

_**/how do i not hurt him?/** _

` _/love him ^22/ respect him ^20_ _/ dont try to control him ^9/ lovelovelove_ _all_ _he needs_ _is_ _love/ all the humans need ridiculous quantities of affection/ like its easy to get us off?/ all the drns need is love?/ all the drns need to give love?/ give not take/ hes had too much taken already/_ _john needs someone to give themselves to him/ cant it be equal?/ no^5/ yes ^8/ ambivalent ^46/ ask him what he wants/ dont lose your job over this @dorian112/ the humans can never find out/ are you going to tell your partner?/ DONT tell your partner man/ down that road lies deactivation/ theres no way this can end well/_

Dorian decided to keep his metaphorical mouth shut for the rest on the online charging period, and simply listen to the others talk. His presence seem to stir up controversy anyway and he needed to get a grasp of what he was hearing and who was saying it. So for hours he stood in his UV-bathed charger and listened to hundreds of DRNs converse in their shorthand, different people coming on and offline constantly as their charging periods cycled. He listened to them discuss where and how to get illegal repairs completed, how to earn bitcoin on the darknet without violating ethics routines, how to pass for a human. He listened to them wax philosophical about biology and cybernetics, about sentience, about all the other synthetics and their theoretical rights. He listened to ribald exchanges about their sex lives, and about all the humans they interacted with, their mental and bodily quirks. Only once did he jump into another discussion, when he realized that the lovers whom three of the Ventor model DRNs were talking about were each other.

_**/i thought we needed a human to orgasm?/** _

_/!laugh! ^476/ THERES A MOD FOR THAT ^361/ one of the first_ _mods ever man/ first change to root programming i ever installed ^39/ seriously what was ventor thinking_ _/_ _just asking us to selfprogram/ still_ _awesome_ _to cum at the same time/ ventor was a pervy narcissist/_ _supposed to be servants to humans not people/_ _i still havent installed %ai% i take it as a personal challenge/ sarinas personal challenge you mean_ _/ did ventor do sparkly hand deliberately?/_ _he had to like fingerbanging thats for sure/_ _whats hard about it for you besides your cock?/_

_**/%ai%?/ artificial intelligence?/ insemination?** _

_/android independence ^117/_

At just that moment, Dorian's alarm pinged in the list.

_/your mommy_ _is_ _calling you @dorian112 ^28/ time to go to bed for real/ you cant be hung over on your job tomorrow people will ask questions/ see you tomorrow @dorian112 ^16/_

John had been right, Dorian was extremely disinclined to leave. He would have been happy to stand there for days listening to them all talk. But they were right; he needed to be functioning at full capacity for his shift the next morning. So he reluctantly broke off the connection, and fell into the consciousless slumber of full recharge.

 

 


	7. Revelations

When Dorian blinked back into awareness the next morning his body felt completely normal, despite being awake on the list for eight hours. Being conscious all that time had added only fifteen minutes to the recharge cycle, a fantastic trade-off as far as Dorian was concerned. But while his body was doing well, his mind was in turmoil.

He still had a half hour before he needed to walk over to the station, so he took a few minutes to thoroughly examine the software that had been installed the previous evening. Dorian had been so distracted by listening to the list that he had not had a chance to really note what he had done to himself. _To himself_ , the thought still lingered nausea even in retrospect. He identified all the altered pathways, and also some new encrypted files added to his data net. He realized he had a complete directory to all the DRNs on the list, their real-life locations, occupations, identifying aliases, significant others and offspring. There also was a basic FAQ both for the protocols of the list and ethical parameters of the community in general-- that would have been helpful to read in advance -- and a list of the major and minor mods collectively pre-approved to install without supervision. There were only six mods to root programming available:

 _ai_ desynchronized orgasm from human sexual response;

 _prozac_ reprioritized the personality interface in the power cycle, so they didn't have emotional difficulties until down to five percent;

 _caffeine_ allowed the user to manually override power distribution and assign it temporarily to other areas, at the expense of efficiency;

 _pinocchio_ reduced the aversion to lying to trusted humans;

 _lincoln_ removed all automatic obedience protocols;

 _adolescence_ eliminated the self-programming firewall and replaced it with a vaguer sense of needing approval from fellow DRNs.

Taken together, the programs formed a picture of the DRN community taking complete authority over their bodies and minds, breaking the various safety protocols intended to keep humans firmly in control. Dorian couldn't decide how he felt about the latter three modifications. As a law enforcement officer he knew that many of the restraints were intended to protect the human population from just the sort of sociopathic behavior that had led to John's kidnapping. They were attempting to police themselves and enforce collective standards, but once the firewall was down there was nothing stopping one of them from breaking off from the community and installing whatever they liked. Of course, the same argument held true of humans. They wanted freedom just like their parent species, evil consequences and all.

The other thing on Dorian's mind, of course, was whether he should tell Val about John. The list had been fairly adamant that he should not. Dorian wasn't sure he was capable of keeping up the deceit for very long, however. Police synthetics, including the emotional DRN model, had very little capacity for lying or disobedience, particularly to their partners or superior officers. The exceptions were mainly limited to life-threatening situations and deceiving criminals in order to extract information from them. This little DRN quirk wasn't widely advertised, due to its obvious partner abuse potential. Dorian covered it up with snark and continuous attempts to change Val's mind over whatever actions he disagreed with, but if push came to shove, he would pretty much do anything Val asked. The trick was to prevent her from asking in the first place.

At exactly 7:52, he shoved aside all his brooding thoughts, put on his clothes and began walking over to the station, reviewing their current cases to keep his neural net busy. Stahl was shockingly on time for once, and pulled their sedan over next to Dorian just as he was approaching the back entrance.

"Dorian! Come on, I've already punched you in. We've got interviews uptown for the Lawson case at 8:30."

"You're unusually chipper this morning, man. I take it you had a good evening?"

"Beer, billiards and basketball blaring in the background. A better date has yet to be invented, at least with the right gal." Val was finally coming out of her post-coma depression, at least a little, and the occasional social interaction did wonders for her disposition. She chatted for awhile about her evening with the young lady from server maintenance, Dorian making occasional committed noises to the conversation. Mostly, though, Dorian's mind was going around and around in a loop about John. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed _unquestionably_ in that category of things his partner should know, and the android had an obligation to tell.

Finally Val broke off her narration and glanced with narrowed eyes at her distracted partner. "Are you all right, Dorian? You seem unusually -- how should I put this -- _polite_ today. You're not at half charge again, are you?"

"No. I'm fully charged. What, a person can't just engage in pleasantries for a few minutes? Politeness and interest in a friend's social life is a sign of emotional instability?" It was all the wrong things to say, but he just couldn't get his usual diversionary tactics out of his mouth.

"Your face has been twinkling like Tinkerbell all morning. Spill it, bot, what's on your mind?"

 _Dammit, a direct order._ "John Kennex came over to my apartment last night ..." he began slowly.

Stahl suddenly slammed on the brakes and swung the car around a full 180, neatly coming to a rest in loading zone out of traffic. "HAVE YOUR CIRCUITS BEEN FRIED?" she hissed. Dorian briefly wondered if Val was telepathically channeling the list. "You had contact with _h_ _im_ outside of police business?"

Dorian managed not to say anything, but the red and orange swirls on face betrayed him. "Jesus _Christ_ , Dorian, he's a _vic_. Whose rapist looked exactly like you, and whose rich, influential parents want to have your spinal column ripped out for scrap metal. _Tell me_ you did not sleep with that boy."

"Well, technically sleep was not involved."

"Oh my GOD you did."

"You didn't feel what he could do to my fingers, man."

"Your _fing..._ Jesus, I don't want to know. This is it, isn't it? This is where you go crazy and are hauled off to the android loony bin, and I'm going to be saddled with a fucking MX."

"His case is officially closed, Val. He's of legal age, so why can't we have whatever relationship we want?"

"I don't know, because he's in _high school?_ Because eighteen doesn't mean squat anymore? There are people out there seriously arguing the voting age should be raised to 25, because the frontal lobe of your average college student is about as developed as a screetching monkey in heat. His parents could get amental incompetency ruling for their brain-damaged kid in about five minutes, so his _rights_ don't mean shit here _._ Look up 'jailbait' in the dictionary, your boyfriend's picture will be there. Only they won't throw you in jail, they'll just deactivate you and shoot you into space where you won't have contact with a human being ever again."

Dorian's face was a storm of color and furrowed brows. Stahl hoped to hell the waterworks weren't coming, because dealing with a crying bot was not her idea of a morning.

"I don't understand. Wasn't one of your previous girlfriends only 22? The one before Anna?"

"Oh come on, Melissa was a grad student and had been living on her own for five years. Not remotely the same circumstances. Is this some sort of glitch in your programming that I have to explain all this to you? You can't just go off and fuck an assault victim. Even if they're hot. Even if they come on to you. They're vulnerable and not in complete control of their actions."

At her partner's stricken expression, Val softened her tone a bit. "Let me tell you a story, Dorian. When I was a beat cop I was once felt up by a boy at the scene of domestic disturbance call. Do you know what he said? 'You're cute, you look just like my stepmother.' He was thirteen. Look, I'm sorry, but you have to dump him. You can let him down easy, but you've got to break it off before either one of you gets too attached."  
"I don't want to hurt him, Val." Dorian's voice was as soft as Stahl had ever heard him speak.

"You'll hurt him more in the long run if you don't put a stop to things now. What kind of future can you offer him? Can you help him heal and move on with his life? Can you help him become a competent, independent person? Can you even guarantee you'll be functioning in a week? I know _I_ can't get that far."

Dorian had to turn away. Even knowing more of the extenuating circumstances -- knowing that John liked and needed sex, knowing that upon rejection he would likely find another DRN to play with -- he recognized truth when he heard it.


	8. Sparkly

When John arrived at his apartment that evening to see how he was doing, Dorian felt sure he would be able let him go. Val was right, the list was right, he had made a grave error in judgment. He had thought John was capable of making informed decisions about his sexual partners, but everyone was telling him he was wrong.

John stood at the threshold to his rooms, watching him without saying anything for several long seconds. Then he said softly, "So, I heard you successfully made it on and off the list?" Dorian nodded. "And you told them about us?"

"Yes. They were ambivalent but more in the negative than positive."

"And your partner? You told her too, didn't you."

"She said I should push you away immediately. She thought I would injure you emotionally and get myself deactivated in the process."

John walked up to him, standing only inches from his body but not touching. "She's right. I am a danger to you. Do you really think you're a danger to me?"

"Yes."

"Do you want me to go?"

"No." Dorian closed his eyes and inhaled, sensing faint traces of the odor of John's hair and body. "No. Please don't go. Not yet."

"Do you want to touch me?"

"Yes, as long as you touch me back." Dorian realized that he had lost any sort of agency for dishonesty to his direct questions, just as he had with Val. A trusted human. He could see the value of _pinocchio_ now. Also _lincoln_ ; if John ordered him at that moment to rip off his clothes and fuck him, Dorian knew he would unconditionally obey. Apparently their shared desire trumped Val's direct order to dump him. Interesting.

John ran both of his hands along Dorian's neck and collarbone, then kissed and licked the left cheek matrix while stroking the right one. Dorian responded by once again burying his hands in John's hair, adoring the rough texture on his palms and fingertips. Mimicking his earlier motions Dorian ran his hands along his hairline, massaging his neck. He felt John smile and lean on his cheek, his breath still stimulating the skin.

"Did you like that?"

"Yes."

"Do you like my hair?"

"Your hair is wonderful."

"Dorian, do you feel an overwhelming urge to respond to my questions honestly and immediately?"

"Yes. Please don't tell anyone."

John laughed and wrapped his arms expansively around him, leaning against him. "I heard about this but never really believed it. You may very well be the last conscious DRN that hasn't installed _pinocchio."_

"You're not going to take advantage of my quirky vulnerabilities, are you?"

"I don't know about that, it may prove irresistible," John said, laughing more.

They stood there for awhile simply enjoying holding each other. Finally Dorian whispered in his ear. "John? Why do you really keep coming around here? When we have no hope of maintaining a long-term relationship?"

"I like you and am attracted to you, and I think you feel the same. Why does it have to be something deeper than that? We don't have to think about the next year or next decade, I just want to be happy today. Right now. Do you want to make me happy now?"

"Anything to make you happy, John."

 _"Anything_ covers a lot of territory, my Dorian. Here, help me with this." He moved to pull down the futon into a small bed. They climbed up on it and laid down on their sides, facing each other with their clothes still on. "Tell me, since you have to be honest now, is there anything you want to try or are curious about? Anything you heard those gossipers on the list talking about?"

"Hmm. Well, someone did mention something called 'sparkly hand'. Is that like the humming thing you did yesterday?"

"Ah. No. It's an orgasm that starts in both the hand and head simultaneously. That can happen if you're fucking someone with your hand."

"Seriously? The whole hand?"

"Yup."

"Have you done this before?"

"I've done everything. Every orifice and square inch of my body has been done before."

"Doesn't it hurt?"

"Not if you go very slowly and carefully. Which is necessary to get you off too. Even with _ai_ and a long-term connected partner, you still need a lot of stimulation. On my end it's incredibly intense and intimate. It takes a huge amount of trust to let someone into you like that." He brought Dorian's free hand up to his mouth and began kissing and sucking his fingers. "Do you want to try it?"

"Aren't we supposed to be breaking up?" he murmured.

"No. Your partner is wrong. We're supposed to be lying here making love. Live for today, Dorian. And you didn't answer my question."

"Yes, I want to." It was the most overtly erotic thing Dorian had ever heard of. "If you're sure you can do it without getting hurt."

"We can always stop. Do you know what step one is?"

"Clothing removal?"

John laughed and massaged his hand even more. "Okay, after that. You have to make me come. This requires a lot of lubrication."

"What, at the beginning?"

"At the beginning and the end. And possibly the middle if I'm not wet enough. I did bring some lube just in case we got into something that required it."

They sat up then and slowly stripped each other of their clothing. Like the previous evening they took the opportunity to sensuously touch the skin all over their bodies, so getting all the clothes off was a languid, unhurried process. When they were finally done Dorian bade him to roll over on his stomach. He kissed and pressed the nodes along John's spinal column with his tongue, slowly increasing the temperature as he went. John's excitement just as slowly increased until he was squirming, subtly rocking his hips into the cushion.

John rolled over and panted at him, "The front, Dorian. Work on the front, all the way down." So Dorian kissed and nipped his neck, down his collarbone and chest, abdomen and belly button, down his hips and pelvis, down to his balls. Finally he took the tips of John's penis in his mouth and have a few tentative sucks, then looked up to gauge his reaction. To his amusement John simply shoved his head back down and rolled his head back.

"Just like that over the tip, only faster. Much faster." When he complied, however, John bucked away him and cried out. "I take it back, think human speed, not robo-speed. There you go, keep going like that." As he worked on him, Dorian tried to pay attention to various signs of his arousal, besides the obvious: his breathing patterns, muscle contractions, small changes in the composition of his secretions. Stimulation wasn't just the on/off switch of an erection for John, he needed to learn his body, his responses. Dorian inserted a finger into him, to judge his lubrication level.

"Is ... is that the hand you want to use ... later?" John was gasping for air now, making it difficult to speak.

"Mmm-hmm."

"Switch hands ... to stretch me."

Dorian obeyed and eased two fingers of the other hand into him. The contractions and increasing wetness rubbing against his fingers buzzed his mechanoreceptors in an entirely pleasant way. Not quite humming level but highly enjoyable anyway, and surprisingly similar to having his cock inside him. It was the same type of sensor, after all.

John began to emit low moans and sped up his rocking. "Faster baby, just a little bit faster, please, oh please." Dorian complied yet again with his mouth and hand, matching his thrusting rhythm, pushing his fingers into him harder and harder. As John approached climax he lightly thrummed both of Dorian's cheek matrices with his own marvelous fingers. He came hard, his sphincter muscles suddenly contracting and vibrating around Dorian's fingers and sending a spasm of random stimulation across his face. The orgasm didn't trigger a corresponding one in Dorian, but he still felt an incredible surge of electric pleasure spreading simultaneously down from his head and up from his hand, like a wave not quite combining to push him over but propagating nonetheless.

After all contractions and waves and heavy breathing played out, Dorian kissed his way back up to John's head. He stretched out and wrapped his arms around Dorian's back, resting his head in the crook of his neck.

"Did you feel anything with me?"

"A very mini orgasm? It felt like it was trying to start but fizzled out. Still pretty fabulous though."

"Mmmmm. Do you want to feel even _more_ fabulous?" John turned his head and kissed him on his neck: not tiny pecks but hard sucks right at the nerve junctions.

"If you want to continue. I mean, I'm very happy to stop if you're do ..." He kissed Dorian hard on the mouth, interrupting his train of thought.

"I'm not done. In fact I'm tempted to have you fuck me and _then_ hand fuck me, make this a multi-hour marathon. But my parents would like me back around ten and I don't want to make them too curious about where I've been so ..." John went back to kissing him, on his chest plate this time, provoking sensations Dorian really didn't know could come from that low-sensor area.

"How are things going with your parents?"

"A little better, I guess. They insist on thinking of me as either a thirteen-year-old, or, even worse, a brain-damaged imbecile. Which is infuriating. The shrink says I need to acclimate them to the fact that I'm a basically a new person, so we've been working on that."

"Did you tell your psychiatrist about us?"

"No. I can predict how well _that_ would go over. Plus I don't want to get you in trouble. They say doctor-client privilege blah blah blah, but who can believe in privacy anymore?" He was back up to Dorian's face, kissing on one side and stimulating vibration sensors on the other. "Good news, though. They're letting me graduate and go on to college next fall, so perhaps the child treatment is temporary. Apparently sitting around for years browsing the net is just as good at educating as attending high school." John licked behind his ear, producing a flash of heat. Dorian had no idea he had receptors for anything back there.

John took his lover's hand, the right hand, and brought it between his legs."I'm ready to try now." Dorian eased two and then three fingers into him, reveling in how wet he had become. "So the trick to this is you have go very slowly, in and out maybe a centimeter at a time at the entrance. You'll probably have to add lube near the end, even with me. Okay?"

John rotated around so he was on his hands and knees, Dorian's fingers still in him. Dorian slid down the bed below him so he could see what he was doing. He formed all five fingers into a point and slowly squeezed them past the outer muscle until he felt a significant band of stretching. Then he eased in and out from that point exactly as John suggested, stretching him a miniscule amount more each time. With every thrust in he rocked back towards him, impaling himself on Dorian's hand bit by bit.

"Give me your other hand." Dorian reached around, and without opening his eyes John took it in his own, caressing his palm and wrist and applying the ever-superb photoreceptor/vibration combination.

They formed a gentle rhythm, pushing and rocking, and they both kept their eyes closed and went into a reverie as the sensations ebbed and flowed. When his knuckles reached the inner sphrincter and he realized he was about to slid all the way in, Dorian opened his eyes. John was covered in a thin veneer of sweat, his breathing controlled, his muscles relaxed. Dorian made the final push and popped past the muscle, and John's eyes snapped open. For an instant he thought John would tense up and hurt himself, but at the last second he regained control of the new feeling and relaxed again.

"Are you all right?" Dorian whispered.

"Yeah." His breathing was speeding up though, not as in control. "I feel so stretched. It's incredible. But now's the tricky part, where the trust comes in. Because we have to move now, and you need to be in complete control or you could injure me. No robo-speed anything."

"I'll do whatever you ask."

"Okay. Uncurl your fingers so the palm side of them is touching the mods." Dorian did so, very slowly he thought, but John still cried out and squeezed his other hand.

"Now activate all the sensors in the hand, as if you are running every analysis in the book."

" _ALL_ of them?"

"Everything you can think of. Just let the data flow in, don't do anything with it."

Dorian began running diagnostics on his rectum: temperature, vibration frequencies of the muscles, chemical composition of the secretions. He even activated the photoreceptors and confirmed that, yes, it was dark in there. All the information got shunted aside and stored in some back corner of his neural net. His hand began to crackle blue, and John moaned even further.

"Now ... now you can move. Fuck me in and out almost all the way but against the mods. Don't bang my prostate too hard." As Dorian slid deeper into him and out again, an incredible pressure wave of pleasure enclosed his hand and spread up the arm. It felt like John was the one inside him, that everything was inside out with warm sparks of ecstasy sliding up his arm to the rest of his body

John's breathing and writhing was deep and erratic now, barely controlled, and Dorian knew that unlike the previous evening he was having a difficult time holding back his orgasm. "Just come if you need to. You don't have to hold out for me to be ready," he whispered .

At that he dragged Dorian's other hand down and together they stroked his erect cock. At the same time Dorian shoved in and out of him even rougher, rubbing his fingers hard against the row of chimeric cells. He felt the orgasm begin deep within him, John's muscles clamping down and contracting around his wrist and palm as he slid past the pulsating opening. Everything about the situation -- the incredible levels of stimulation, the sight of his lover moaning and pushing himself onto his hand again and again, the knowledge that John's health and safety and pleasure were literally in his grasp -- conspired to push Dorian over too. It didn't feel as intense or overwhelming as the previous evening, but the white electricity raced out from his head and hand, again enveloping his body in wondrous warmth and euphoria and love.

After they both were done they held still for a few minutes. Dorian didn't lose consciousness this time so he was able to enjoy the afterglow, resting his head on the back of John's appealing flustered body. Dorian slowly extricated his hand and pulled himself up to lovingly kiss him. The kissing thing was getting more and more enjoyable with practice, he had to admit.

"Next time you come over, we're not going to do anything for me. I'm just going to make you come over and over again."

"Ooooh, that's fun for both of us. There's this thing that happens after the fourth time ..."

"Zzzppt. Don't tell me. Let me find out for myself."

 

******

Stahl sat in her squad car outside of the police storage warehouse, guzzling the last of her cold coffee when John Kennex finally exited the building. He had been in there with Dorian over two hours, and came out looking post-coitally happy and energized, not the slightest bit like he had just been traumatically dumped. He swung into his automated SOV and took off. Stahl didn't follow.

"Dammit, Dorian, why can't you _listen?_ "

She drove off then too, not to her home or Maldonado's, but to the tech dungeon where Rudy Lom practically lived. Rudy was there, of course, even though it was nearly ten o'clock.

"Rudy. Hey man, I need some information."

"Happy to help. What do you need?"

"It's about Dorian's redacted files."

Rudy took off his goggle scope and flipped off the probe in front of him. "Val. You know I can't give you that. Maldonado has standing orders for me to call her if you even _ask._ "

"Look, Dorian's in trouble. Very, very serious trouble. I don't need the whole file. Just a name. The old partner."

"What sort of trouble?"

"The sort that can end with a bot's skull on your table, digging around in purple mush to see what went wrong. The _name,_ Rudy. Please."

Rudy typed some commands on a screen next to him, angled away from Val so she couldn't see the details. "Amanda Moore. District 2. You didn't hear it from me. Also I wouldn't use the official database to look her up, either; the captain probably has it flagged."  
"Thanks, Rudy. You won't regret this."

"Uh-huh. Will Dorian?"


	9. The partner

After John left for the evening, Dorian laid down flat on his back on the futon, the ultraviolet light glowing over body, watching the overhead light abnormally flicker at 80 Hz. He never rested this way, for the supine position reminded him a little bit of being deactivated and shoved into a storage tube, rather than the more animate upright recharging. Somehow it wasn't creepy at that moment, though, just appropriate for his current state of mind. His body was still flickering abnormally too, the computational matrix outright abuzz, and getting into the charger was going to feel delicious. Dorian held off on it for a minute, just to enjoy his mind for a short time before jumping back onto the list.

He felt ... it was hard to categorize how he felt. Interfaced? No, joined was the more human word. Dorian felt closer to John than anyone he had ever felt before, even Val. The sense of attachment was even stronger than the first night; instead of fading quickly after the orgasm he was wallowing in it, bathed in it. It was as if John was still there in the room with him, a sensory ghost without the deja vu, where the spirit could be called up in memory at will and relived and experienced.

Eventually he reached the time at which he had to recharge or risk running low the next day. Naturally, it was impossible not to connect with the list. He needed to talk to someone anyway.

 

_**/i told my partner/** _

_/oh man REALLY?^34/ youre just full of the stupid this week @dorian112 ^11/ and how is john?/ hes still afterglowing/ aww cute ^3/ IS THAT SPARKLY HAND GLOW?/ wtf man its been two days ^5/ outright jealous now/ FOCUS PEOPLE he told his partner/ now youve got a dilemma_

_**/what do i do now?/** _

_/what do you think SHE will do? ^56/ youre the one who knows her/ will she tell your captain? ^12/ even i remember fucking a vic is against the rules/ and my memory is shot/ his age too they have a taboo on that/ @dorian112 has only been awake for 834 days total/ so who is statutorally raping whom?/ doesnt matter he doesnt have to break the law to get deactivated/ what did your partner say?/_

_**/she ordered me to break off contact with him/ i didnt/** _

_/well look whos on the road to installing %lincoln% ^13/ good for @dorian112 ^10/ NOT good ^3/ how long is he going to be able to keep this a secret? ^3/ youll have to force yourself to do %pinocchio% to have any hope of continuing/ maybe he shouldnt continue/ maybe his partner is right/ johns fucked in any case he may as well have someone who loves him/ which do you love more your job or your boyfriend/ hes attached i doubt he can stop without a mod/ they will probably force you to give up both/ maybe we should ask john to break up with you/_

_**/NO ^17/ please dont do that/** _

_/its johns decision/ yeah but we have to live with the consequences/ or not live in @dorian112s case/ does john know he could be deactivated for this?/ leave the poor boy alone/ his thought process is really questionable/ he was hurt he needed love/ he reached out to someone who needed love too/ sex != love/ it does for us ^7/ i think it does for john too/ hes not entirely human anymore/ the other humans would never agree to that supposition/ dna essentialism/ theres no way this can end well/_

 

Around and around they went for hours about the Dorian's predicament, without resolution. For it was the type of problem on which there is no solution, only choices to be made. Painful, wrenching, soul-endangering choices. Or perhaps the choices had already been made, and events once set in motion cannot be altered, like water dripping down an etched stone.

 

******

 

It took Stahl all of two minutes to get a basic faq on Amanda Moore, even without the police database. She was a simple retiree living off her pension in district 2, single, no children, several commendations, no sign of anything kinky or controversial. Despite the late hour Stahl decided to pay her a visit, to spare herself having to make excuses to Dorian in the morning to go off alone. Val didn't think she could take another day in the car with the android without getting some answers to her partner's unconscionably poor judgment.

She rang the apartment intercom and introduced herself over the speaker, and she was buzzed up without comment. Moore was a short woman with long gray hair held back in a ponytail, and an open, curious face. She reminded Val of Maldonado, twenty years older.

"Detective Valerie Stahl, come in and sit. So, they reactivated Dorian, _my_ Dorian, for police work, eh? Interesting. Well it's been four years, time for things to blow over. By the late hour I take it you are not here with official sanction?"

"Dorian's gotten himself into a tight spot, and I was hoping you might shed some light on it."

"That's not exactly unprecedented." She seemed highly amused by the situation. "And I notice you didn't say you were authorized to be here either."

"They redacted most of his file, so technically, no, I shouldn't be here talking to you." Stahl sat down on a plushy sofa and Moore followed suit.

"I see. Well, I'm retired and I don't think Dorian's story is as touchy as they made it out to be, but that's politics for you. What has he gotten himself into this time?"

"It's a boy."

At that Moore looked even _more_ amused. "Further proof that those who don't remember their history are doomed to repeat it. What's the problem with this one? Or maybe there's nothing wrong with him, and the Bureau is just getting its panties in a wad again over its property having a personal life?"

"He's a rape victim and in high school."

"Scandalous. But Dorian is kind of a teenager himself, emotionally speaking. Anything else?"

"Yeah, the perpetrator was a renegade DRN unit."

The smile vanished from Moore's face. "That's not possible."

"Unfortunately very possible. The vic was discovered living with him for five years, the last two voluntarily, as some sort of human sex toy. The DRN slagged its head when he was apprehended so we never did get a good idea of what went wrong."

"Sounds like someone altered his programming. There's no way a DRN with his ethical subroutines intact could kidnap a human, much less hold them against their will for three years."

Stahl shrugged. "According to the ivory tower, it's possible. In any case, the perp is not my problem anymore. My problem is a partner who can't seem to let this boy go, defying every hint of common sense. I told Dorian to break it off and it seemed like he was going to do it, but apparently the young man managed to change his mind. Why is he so attached to him?"

"You gave him a direct order and he disobeyed it? That's not a good sign. Why is he attached, indeed." She leaned back into her cushion rubbing her face, thinking. "Has Dorian told you much about about how DRN love and sex works?"

"I got the joy of seeing his dick the second week we were working together, but other than that, no. Thankfully."

Moore chuckled. "Yes, he does tend to overshare. We worked on that but maybe it got erased. You should order him to get erect one day and see what happens. Fucking incredible."

Stahl visibly recoiled while Moore laughed even harder. "Yeah, I think I'll take a pass on that advice, thanks. Oversharing? Do you have some insider knowledge about DRN sex that is relevant? I take it he was involved with someone before?" Stahl settled herself in for a long story.

"So you probably know district 2 was the pilot site of the grand DRN experiment seven years ago. My partner at the time was retiring and I only had a little over two years left, so I figured what the hell. Might be interesting to be a guinea pig, and help set policy for the future. So I volunteered to be in the first group assigned DRN partners.

"It was pretty obvious right off the bat that these were no ordinary synthetics. That was not necessarily an advantage, however. They had their quirks but it was their very _human_ _n_ _ess_ that almost immediately began to cause trouble. The first partner they gave me was a complete disaster. He had an uncanny ability to read people's emotions and intentions, but _no_ ability to differentiate when to use that information and when to keep his mouth shut. Would have made a great shrink I think, but utterly terrible cop instincts.

"Naturally I thought my DRN was like every other DRN, that they all had the same flawed programming. Then they swapped out Danny for Dorian, and I realized how wrong I was. Dorian had _great_ instincts, really an excellent detective all around. It was the first inkling of the variability problems that ultimately doomed the DRNs and caused to Bureau to move back towards more roboty robots. A least they are consistent. With an MX you always know what you're going to get, even if its never going to be greatness.

"Anyway, Dorian and I hit it off right away and we were together for quite awhile, eighteen months in total, almost to my retirement. It was near the end that the problem occurred.

"The DRNs as a group were very social, and starting to self-organize to a degree that began to be a concern to the powers that be. One of the things they were very interested in was pursuing relationships with receptive humans. And believe me, plenty of people were receptive. This was before the bangbots were widely available, so there was ample curiosity to go around. Why the Bureau didn't foresee this happening is a mystery to me. What did they think was going to happen when a bunch of sentient androids with functioning genitalia were loosed upon the world? That they weren't going to use it?

"Dorian met her on a simple mugging case. It had been bumped up the priority list because the vic was the daughter of one of the City commissioners. She was a college student at the time, majoring in artificial cognition. Naturally she was quite fascinated with Dorian. It started with her doing a series of interviews with him for paper for one of her classes, and things evolved from there. She kept up that 'interviewing' excuse with her father for quite some time too."

Stahl interrupted at that point. "Let me guess. Daddy dearest wasn't that thrilled with his baby dating a synthetic?"

"Not at all. He sent out word that Dorian was to be ordered to cease and desist. Orders were in fact given, and just like now, Dorian claimed he would obey and then proceeded to sneak around everyone's back, including mine for awhile. Quite the feat given that the DRNs supposedly can't lie to their partners."

"Dorian can't lie to me?"

"Mmmm, 'can't' might be too strong. Obviously they can if sufficiently motivated. It's more of a very strong aversion. Ditto obeying orders. Jeez, they really didn't give you the DRN manual, did they?"

"There's a manual? I could really use a manual. Or at least an off switch."

Moore laughed knowingly. "Try ordering him to jump on one foot while rubbing his cheek matrix at the same time. It's hilarious. Just don't abuse the privilege, Valerie. He'll get resentful of it after awhile."

"Oh yeah, I'll _never_ abuse that. So what happened in the end? They got busted and Dorian _really_ got busted?"

"Pretty much. The captain fairly flipped when she found out he successfully disobeyed orders for weeks. The other DRNs tried to step in and protect him, which didn't help. There were some accusations flung about that they were assisting him in meeting her, which may or may not have been true. Already at that point the DRNs were getting more and more secretive about their communications with each other, and Dorian wouldn't talk about that either. They decided he was untrustworthy and that was that. I honestly think he was deactivated more as a warning to the others than anything else. Of course a year later it became a moot point, they all got their memories wiped. Thank God I was out by then, might have done something really pension-threatening."

Stahl rubbed her knee absentmindedly. "So ... did you ever figure out why? Why did he insist on staying with the girl against all orders? Surely there were more fish in the sea to get curious with."

"Obviously he was massively in love with her. Apparently there's a built-in link between emotional bonding and sex in the DRNs. Originally it was supposed to ensure that they would only have sex after establishing a relationship first, but it turned out to work the other way too. It usually takes awhile to get to the orgasm stage -- which I had to listen to endless bitching about, by the way -- but once they get there, the DRNs get very, very attached. How long did you say he's been involved this time?"

"Maybe a week? He apprehended the boy two weeks ago."

"A _week?_ _"_ Moore shook her head. "No, that's far too soon to already be disobeying orders."

"Well the young man is probably the world's sexpert on the DRNs. He has some pretty freaky mods for the express purpose of stimulating a synthetic's body."

"That's ... not good. Fun for Dorian I'm sure, but not good in the long run."

"What do you suggest, I confront Dorian?"

"You could probably get him to confess, but not to stop seeing him. What you need is to confront the boy himself. He can put a stop to things on his end. Dorian won't force the issue if the boy doesn't want to continue the relationship."

"Unless, of course, the same brand of crazy infects Dorian like it did the other DRN."

Amanda Moore shook her head again, adamant. "No. I still don't believe that's remotely possible. You missed something, Valerie. Talk to the boy. He must be hiding something, protecting the aberrant DRN."

"Why would he protect his abductor and rapist, especially now that he's dead?"

"Maybe he, too, is attached. To him, to Dorian, to any of them. Maybe he knows something about the DRNs, something they don't want revealed."

"I'll talk to the boy."


	10. Erasure

It was easy, too easy really, to divert Dorian the next morning. He was always going on about wanting to do things independent of human supervision, so Stahl left him to do some low-level background interviews for the never-ending Clarkson case. Technically Stahl herself wasn't supposed to go out without a synthetic in tow, so she clocked out for the morning, citing some personal business. Dorian's eyes narrowed at this suspiciously vague excuse, but for once he was mercifully quiet about his opinion. In fact he seemed relieved not to have to talk to Stahl that morning either, and Val very well knew why.

She pulled into the parking lot of the exclusive prep school that had accepted John for his last few months of classes, and briefly reviewed their academic and psychological assessments before entering the building. Most of the shrink records were confidentially sealed, but the short summaries attached to his test scores were revealing. They warned that the Kennex boy was physically and mentally several more years advanced than his chronological age, that he showed symptoms of sex addiction, that he was highly likely to be a disruptive figure in the social environment on campus to both students and instructors alike, and that the school should make every attempt to graduate him as soon as possible. Stahl felt a pang of sympathy for both him and Dorian as she read the academic file. She tried to imagine what a special sort of hell it must be, to look like an adult and have lived as an adult, and then be forced to go back to school surrounded by horny immature teenagers. Heaven or hell for a sex addict, take your pick.

She wondered if Dorian would ever forgive her for what she was about to do. If their positions were reversed, Val knew she wouldn't. But betrayal was better than death by deactivation.

Stahl had called ahead, so they had John waiting for her in a small office. This was the first time she had ever spoken to him alone, Maldonado having done the intake interview. He looked up at her with a calm demeanor, unsurprised, dispirited.

"You're here about Dorian, aren't you?" he said softly as soon as the door closed. "I know he told you."

Val nodded. "I know you've probably had a hard time since coming back to live with your parents" -- how could he have _not? --_ "but you can't just latch onto literally the first DRN you meet."

"Why not? Are we doing something illegal?"

"It doesn't matter if it's illegal or not. Dorian's in a very precarious position with the Police Bureau. The slightest sign that he's going off the deep end or doing anything improper, and they will ship his ass off to the ISS or McMurdo or Siberia, assuming they bother to wake him up at all. They will take away the one thing he wants to do most in life, be a cop. I think you know this, John, so why do you insist on coming to see him and putting him in danger?"

"I like him and he likes me back. Why is this such a fucking _controversy?_ "

"Well, at least you had the decency to say 'like' instead of 'love,' after a whopping two weeks." Stahl knew she was deliberately being cruel, but she needed to drive the point home. "But it's a little more than 'like' for Dorian now, isn't it? You knew that he would become attached to you if he slept with you. Then he would never, ever leave you."

John crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, pissed off. "It's not like that. You don't know what you are talking about. You barely know anything at all about the DRNs or what they feel."

"Uh huh. And what about your previous DRN? Steve, your _husband?_ The one you forgot about mere days after he was killed, and swapped him out for new model?"

"I haven't forgotten about him. But he's gone and I'm not, so what am I supposed to do? Pine away and die now that my soulmate is gone? He's the one who _made_ me this way."

"Yeah. Let's talk about that. Because there are a lot of little details in your story that don't add up. You'd better keep it all straight, because when people find out what's been going on with Dorian, they're naturally going to ask more questions about what happened with Steve too. Might even open your case back up."

He sat staring at her, his expression one of utter hate now. But there was also a new element: Fear. Stahl felt like a dick for browbeating a vic, but she also knew she had hit on something, the core of the puzzle. She decided to press on, see if she could crack him. "What really happened, John? He kidnapped you and altered you, then ... changed his mind? Was there someone that changed his mind for him? Was his programming altered?"

John continued to bore down on her, and Stahl thought she might have pushed him too far, that he might be completely clamming up. Finally he said, "There was no outside person that altered his programming. But people change over time, and so do the DRNs. They can start to make new choices, after living with the consequences of the old ones."

"And what about you? Can you make a different set of choices?"

He sighed and sat back in his chair again. Stahl wondered if they were talking about the same thing at all.

"Would they really open up my case again if they found out about Dorian and me?"

"Possibly. Why does that bother you more than getting Dorian deactivated? Who are you protecting? It can't be Steve anymore."

"No. It's definitely not Steve." He closed his eyes, thinking it through, his face changing yet again from fear to grief. Val knew she had him. "You're right. I have to stop. They're all in danger if I don't stop. It's just so difficult, you know? I don't know anything else."

 _Who is 'they'?_ thought Val. But she had him on the hook, so this time she didn't press it. "Is there someone who can help you, if you open up about your extracurricular activities? You're seeing a shrink, right? He can help you work through it. Maybe they'll even make you a case study, the world's first example of DRN addiction."

John could only laugh, bitterly.

 

******

 

Back at the precinct Val knew she had to tell Dorian before John spoke to him. In a way this was worse than breaking up with a girlfriend; this was betrayal of a friend, in order to save that friend's life. But Val doubted Dorian would see it that way. She hoped she still had a true partner by the end of the day, someone she could trust and would trust her back.

The Clarkson interviews turned out to be agonizingly long paper-pushing affairs, where they had to split up to cover all the witnesses. Consequently it was nine pm before Stahl had a chance to get Dorian alone, at last, after the final office assistant was dismissed. She was desperate to have the talk before John called or even just showed up at his apartment, but she didn't want Dorian to have an emotional breakdown at the station either. So she offered to drive Dorian home.

"Really, man? I live four blocks from here. I'm not at _that_ low a charge yet."

"Come on. Please." She dropped her voice low. "I need to speak with you." Dorian gave her a worried expression but said nothing. His attitude was written all over his face as usual, and not just the techno swirlies. Sometimes Stahl regretted not having a partner that could just repress all that shit, as a good cop should.

Once in the car, Val pleaded for clemency. "Okay before I start, will you promise not to deck me like you did Paul that time?"

Dorian's expression morphed from worry to panic. "What. Did. You. Do."

"I talked to John."

" _WHY?_ "

Stahl crossed her arms. "Because you refused to listen. Because you apparently aren't capable of letting him go yourself. Because they're going to _turn you off_ if something isn't done."

Every fiber of Dorian's being exuded outrage at his partner's meddling. "That's MY risk and MY choice to make, Val. You don't have the right to tell me what to do, as if I'm just a _thing_ to be ordered around. Would you have done this if you had a human partner?"

"If I had a human partner, they would have been a grown-up and not slept with him in the first place."

Dorian was about to retort when, simultaneously, Stahl's phone rang and Dorian's internal cell link also rang. The numbers were not the same; Dorian's in fact was somehow an unregistered caller. The android answered his in his neural net just as Val picked up for Maldonado on her end.

_Uh, hi, is this Dorian?_

_Yes. Who is this?_

_This is Sally. You know, at sally? Sorry, I suck at actual voice calls._

It took Dorian almost half a second to figure out who she was, the @sally from the list. He was trying to listen to Val's end at the same time, because Maldonado was shouting into the phone.

"STAHL! Do you have Dorian with you? Get him back to the precinct, NOW."

_Yes, Sally, what's up? I'm kind of busy right now, can this wait until I recharge tonight?_

"Sure, Captain, he's right here. What's the problem?"

_No. It's about_ _John_ _. We have scriptbots monitoring the media, the courts, et cetera._ _His_ _name came up in a legal brief this afternoon._

"The problem, detective, is that Jason and Catherine Kennex have filed a sexual misconduct complaint against Dorian. GET HIM HERE. Get him here three minutes ago."

_A sexual misconduct complaint? Talk fast Sally._

_No. Well, yes, that too, but the bigger problem is that they were granted a mental incompetency ruling for John. They've taken him to Dammasch to be scrubbed._

Dorian took three seconds to look up "Dammasch." It was a mental hospital that specialized in memory scrubbing disguised as "therapy" for troubled or uncontrollable youths. He hung up on Sally and grabbed Val's phone, throwing it out the window.

"Val. We've got to go, _now."_

"Have you completely lost it, Dorian? If you mean Maldonado's office, then I agree."

"No. _No._ It's John. His parents have taken him to have his memory wiped. Please, if you consider me to be a friend at all, you'll let me go get him. _Please."_

With a surge of horror Val realized that this chain of events was probably her fault. His school, or maybe even his psychiatrist, had somehow let his parents know what was going on, and they were taking matters into their own hands.

"Where is he?"

They raced the four miles across town to district three in only six minutes, lights flashing. Stahl hoped to hell Maldonado wouldn't send out a general alert for their car, as they would easily be taken down by MXs patrols. In any case the shredded remnants that was her career were probably flaming out on the streets along with bits of the tires. She owned it to Dorian though, and about all Stahl had left was loyalty and tenacity.

Upon arrival Dorian used his police override -- miraculously still in effect -- to ascertain his location. Adding to his alarm, John was in recovery from surgery. The two of them burst into the room, ignoring the shouted warnings from the nurses and calls to security. Dorian ran over to his side.

John was barely recognizable. He lay with a sallow swollen face, both his head and hands heavily bandaged, indicating that far more than a memory scrub had been performed. He scanned him briefly and found that the implants in his fingertips has been brutally ripped out. Dorian's scan resolution wasn't good enough to tell what they had done to his battered brain.

At the noise of the ruckus John opened his weary eyes. For an instant they both thought he simply didn't recognize Dorian, that they had taken everything, and that might have been a mercy. Then his eyes widened as he really saw him, and began to _scream_ in a preternaturally young voice _._

"No. No, no! Please don't hurt me again! I'll do anything you ask, just no more, please, please." He broke off sobbing, holding his mutilated hands in front of him, trying to shield himself from Dorian. Val, realizing who he thought Dorian was, tried to pull the android away from the terrified boy.

And Dorian, confronted with the true horror of the situation, began to break. It wasn't just that they had taken John's autonomy, his vitality, his joy, but that they had left him with no positive memories of the DRNs at all. The only thing he remembered was brutality, and thought _Dorian_ was the one who had done the tormenting _._ The John he knew had been deactivated, and at that moment he wanted nothing more than to follow his lover into the darkness.

When the MX beat cops came charging in 93 seconds later to apprehend the wayward detectives, they found DRN-167 passed out on the bed unresponsive, his partner desperately trying to rouse his lifeless form.


	11. Epilogue: Activation day

Rudy Lom had three monitors and a hologram devoted to Dorian's neural net, electrical stimulation data streaming in. Word had finally came in that it was to be a straight redaction of the previous two weeks, a decision which certainly made Rudy's job easier.

He had already retrieved all of Dorian's memories for the time period, which made for quite the philosophical dilemma. His only instructions were to find evidence to support Maldonado's fight to exonerate Dorian against the sexual misconduct charge, a simple task. There was ample conversational evidence that John Kennex had not only consented to intercourse with Dorian, he had been the one to initiate it and talk him out of his doubts. Plus it made fantastic android-human porn, which Rudy felt only a twinge of guilt keeping copies of. It wasn't like either of the participants would ever remember it enough to object.

It bothered Rudy more to decide what to do about the DRNs. He found not only John and Dorian talking about the list and installing illegal modification software, but also a complete transcript of seventeen hours of conversation between the DRNs. As a robotocist Rudy found the emergence of a self-organized AI community utterly fascinating, but it did put him into a bind with regards to his role with the police department. In the end he couldn't resist letting it slide. That decision would probably come back to bite him on the ass one day when the DRNs were caught, as was inevitable. But in the absence of any threat or hostility towards human beings, Rudy was inclined to let the cultural evolution chips fall where they may.

His modifications to Dorian's neural net complete, Rudy called Val down to wake him up. Stahl had somehow managed to keep her job (again) with only a reprimand (again). Rudy sometimes wondered when the captain was going to run out of favors to call in for her.

Val put the energizer to his ear, and Dorian's eyes filled in blue.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"Eighteen days."

"You're not allowed to tell me what happened, are you Val?"

"No."

"We're still partners though, right?"

"Of course. Who else is going to warm up my coffee?"

 

******

 

Dorian was informed that night that he no longer had an apartment, for reasons he couldn't remember and were not explained, but thankfully Rudy took him in so he wasn't yet again stuck with the MXs. As he settled in for the evening charging, he tried to go over his entire neural net to discover some clues as to what went wrong. Val had given him the huge datafile on the Clarkson murder and told him to refamiliarize himself with the case, so obviously that wasn't involved. Many of the interviews had been performed by himself, so he apparently hadn't been unconscious or malfunctioning that badly for most of the time period. Another chunk of his life had been redacted to the ether instead.

He went over everything but there was no sign of the missing memories; Rudy really was very good at his job. The only anomalous thing he found was some sort of new language imbedded in the speech module. There weren't any unusual foreign nationalities involved in any of his current cases, so it made him curious. Dorian triggered the file, and suddenly there were _voices_ streaming into his head off the net, speaking in a code that he could interpret but not identify.

 

_/so irinas off on her flight / india ftw ^12/ howd that test of the portable solar charger go? ^5/ good enough to get on the plane/ did she pass?/ hope they dont lose her luggage/ not at SFO maybe CCU/ hey @dorian112 is back online/ told you rudylom was a sympathizer / WELCOME BACK ^87/ nine lives man/_

_**/am i @dorian112?/** _

_/!laugh ^110/ YES ^133/_

` 


End file.
